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  • June 6, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Only Love Can Do That” based on Psalm 130 and Mark 3:20-35

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nurturing love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,ngdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand,” were rephrased by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King into, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.“

In the Gospel, Jesus is experiencing attack. He was a healer, and a successful one. This disconcerted some people. Isn’t that the way things go sometimes? Someone is doing their thing, their uniquely gifted by God to take care of each other thing, and somehow or another people get upset about it. Maybe Jesus was undermining the revenue streams for other healers. Maybe he was getting a little too famous a little too fast. Maybe the way he went about it decreased dependence on the official religious mechanisms. Maybe he was supposed to be “nobody” and it upset things far too much for him to turn out to be “somebody.”

But somehow or another, this attack on Jesus feels… normal. He was doing a good thing that helped people and others took offense. Welcome to life itself, right?

In this case, the ones who went on the offensive against Jesus didn’t have much to work with. After all, how offensive is it really to heal people and not ask for payment? So they SAID that the reason he had the power to heal was because he was evil. Or, in their language, he was given the power over demons by the head demon.

Now, Jesus tends to be pretty patient with people who are struggling, or downtrodden, or under attack. But, according to the gospels he usually wasn’t above defending himself with quick wit. Mark says that Jesus replied, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” AKA, if evil were being used to drive out evil, it would work against the power of evil.

Or, again, in the way that speaks far better to me, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”1

While I was pondering all of this, in the midst our Wednesday night study “Caring for Inactive Members” Rev. Bob Long shared his understanding of the difference between anger and hate. (Note that is what I remembered him saying, so please assume any faults are mine, not his.) Anger is a sign of caring, a sign that something one values is being violated, and that the person experiencing anger cares enough to want to change what’s wrong and maintain the relationship. On the other hand, hate is a desire to no longer be in relationship with the other, and does not involve caring.

PLEASE NOTE: While I really appreciate this, and all ways of humanizing the experience of having emotions, and any reminder that anger can be fruitful in bringing justice and resolutions, I am also sorely aware that anger can also be used as an excuse for harm, punishment, and abuse. ANGER is a part of life, one that can useful as a way of noticing what we value and guiding us towards actions that fit out values. Anger is not, however, excuse for violence in words or actions. There is a fundamental difference between being angry and taking anger out on others. The former is normal and good. The latter is not.

In this moment in time, we live in the midst of deep and deepening divisions. We’re told that some of the divisions in society are intentionally created by outside nations, seeking to lessen the power of the United States in the world. Others are flames intentionally fanned for the sake of political power. Still others have been used to break apart the mainline denominations, so that our voice in calling for justice and the building of the kindom would be lessened.

And NOW we’ve added to all of this various ways of responding to a global pandemic, questions about masking, vaccinating, social distancing, opening and closing of various businesses, and schools, and places of worship.

There are deep and deepening divisions. Many of them move people to anger. Anger fits, positions on issues of life and death are deeply held. I fear, however, that some are moving people from anger to hate.

Further, I fear that with each and every deepening division, we get better at division and less skilled at connection. I fear we’re getting better at hate, when we’re called to get better at love. To quote MLK again, “Psychologists and psychiatrists are telling us today that the more we hate, the more we develop guilt feelings and we begin to subconsciously repress or consciously suppress certain emotions, and they all stack up in our subconscious selves and make for tragic, neurotic responses.”2

I also fear we’re letting the energy of division come home to roost. The way the outside world works in soundbites, and us vs. them, and gossip, and triangulation, and fear mongering and a refusal to engage in direct communication… all these pieces of division are getting NORMALIZED. So are attacks, like the ones against Jesus that started this whole story in the Gospel.

So, let’s take a few moments to remember again what being a part of the Jesus-movement, kindom building, God-centered, beloved community is all about. It is far easier to focus on what we’re meant to be when we remember what that is.

In the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus says “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

He expands his family. He refuses the boundaries that tell him who he is to love, protect, and care for, and he simply embraces more people in that role. He expands the kindom, his own kindom, to include those working with him in expanding God’s love in the world.

To expand kinship is to expand who is “us” …eventually until there is no “them.” To expand kinship is to have enough trust and respect for other kin to discuss disagreement, disappointments, hurts, and fears directly. To expand kinship is to listen, even to long-winded, indirect stories that may or may not eventually come around to the topic at hand (but … I mean… maybe not DURING a meeting?? ) To expand kinship is to disagree and not let that disrupt relationship. I hope that you’ve seen this in your life, family members who like each other immensely and have enough space in that liking and loving for real differences.

It is my hope that some of what we do in worship is expand kinship. Worship is seeking to connect to the Divine together. Over the past 1 ¼ years, the “together” has taken on new meaning, and has proven to us that there are a lot of different ways to be together. Worship itself is quitea wide range of things. Silence, and word, and music – sometimes a particular worship has only of those forms! Prayer, scripture, and reflection – again, sometimes one is dominant over others. The forms of prayers vary. The types of music vary. The length of service varies!!! The structure and form of the service, and even of the reflections can also vary greatly. I’m reminded that there are a significant number of people in our midst for whom the more profound form of worship is service, and others for whom the Divine is most reachable in nature.

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nuruting love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in [God’s] word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm130:5-6)

Worship make space for that connection. It is time set apart to connect. May worship bring us closer to love, to God, and to each other. May worship even help us gain the strength and courage to keep on connecting with each other across differences. Or to put it another way, maybe worship can function a way to prevent anger from becoming hate. Or maybe it is even more powerful than that. Maybe worship is able to nurture love in us, and love is the thing most powerfully able to drive out hate. May it be so. Amen

1Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 – originally 1963), 47

2 Martin Luther King “Loving Your Enemies” sermon Nov. 17,1957, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Found at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church (He’d edited by the time it was published in Strength to Love.)

June 6, 2021

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  • May 30, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Come, Holy Spirit”

In Easter evening the disciples were locked up together in a house, afraid of what would happen to them. It was into that enclave that stories of resurrection started to be told. And, it was in that enclave that some experiences of resurrection happened. According to Acts, the disciples were mostly together in that room for a rather extended period of time, praying, and …. just a little bit… starting to organize. As time went on, there were more people gathering together, functioning together as an extended family, but still they were gathered together in a tight circle, in Jerusalem.

And then came Pentecost.

Pentecost was and is a Jewish festival celebrating the first fruits of the wheat harvest. Faithful Jews had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, just as faithful Jews had gathered for Passover, 50 days earlier. It was another of the 3 festivals that was a traditional pilgrimage feast.

A colleague of mine suggested that the first Christian Pentecost story, the one we read in Acts, required those days apart from the world.

Of course, at this point, we may scoff at 50 days. 😉 To the scoffers, I’ll offer a reminder of the 40 years of wandering in the desert, which the Bible also said was necessary to “get the people ready.”

As you may know, I do not believe in a God who punishes. I do, however, believe in a God who is willing to use any situation as a jumping off point for good. ANY situation. Those ideas can get confusing sometimes for people, because talking about what God does with a situation can SOUND like “God created this situation for good” but I don’t mean that! I just really believe that God is willing and able to enter any situation and seek the best possible outcome from that point, and often God is far more creative than we’d be able to imagine!

In Acts, 50 days after Easter, The Holy Spirit showed up, with gusto. God’s Spirit is a part of the understanding of the Divine in the Hebrew Bible as well, but the way the Spirit shows up is new. To be fair, the symbol of fire as representing God’s presence isn’t new, the burning bush helps us out there. And “tongues of fire” is a phrase that comes from Isaiah 5. The wind a symbol of the Spirit isn’t new either. But added up, it IS new.

God’s Spirit shows up, sounding like a rushing wind, looking like divided tongues of fire, and imparting the gift of being understandable to people of many nations, languages, and cultures. Robert Wall in the New Interpreter’s Bible says, “God’s spirit is poured out upon a community of believers. The Holy Spirit is not a ‘personal’ gift from God that each believer privatizes – ‘you can have your Spirit if I can have mine.’ This same Spirit of one God ‘appeared among them – on each of them’ as the distinguishing mark of a people belonging to God. The restoration of Israel is the work of this Spirit sent by God as promised (see 1:6) which is why the first auditors of the miracle of tongues were ‘devout Jews from every nation’ (2:5).”1

I must admit that this year I was particularly astonished by the list of the places the devout Jews were from. It served as a profound reminder of the history of the diaspora, of the people of Jewish faith being displaced, which is especially notable when Judaism has an especially strong theology as being people of the (promised) land.

This fits the history of the Jewish people, of course. They settled on land that was a crossroads between civilizations, and as Empires expanded they expanded to include the crossroads. As Empires contracted, other Empires expanded, and a long, difficult history of independence, tributes, colonization, and external control ALREADY characterized their history by the time of Jesus. Wars had come and gone. Empires had come and gone. And each time, people had come and gone, dispersing the “people of the land” to many lands.

It fits, as well, that dispersed people of the land would have a tradition of pilgrimage to come back home to the land.

These themes of place feel so strong in this story this year. The followers of Jesus being so afraid that their world contracted to a single room, or perhaps a home. The devout Jews being so broadly scattered and making such profound efforts to come “home” to worship. The ways that distance separated them even when they were in Jerusalem, by dress, and culture, and LANGUAGE.

The idea of a miracle of understanding. Of course, it makes sense to think about Christian Pentecost as being the antithesis of the Story of the Tower of Babel. In the Tower of Babel story, God was afraid the people had too much power together and seprated them with language. In the Pentecost Story, God’s Spirit blesses the people with connection and the capacity to speak and be understood. It could be said that God has gained trust in the people (and then it becomes a question of if we’ve earned it or God just gave it because God’s like that.)

Sometimes I yearn for the miracles of Pentecost, most often when I am speaking with someone whose language I share, but with whom I’m clearly not managing to communicate. The barriers of assumptions, connotations, life experience, expectations, values, and fears can make “shared language” distinctly insufficient for shared communication.

Yet, we are the inheritors of the Pentecost story. As one person put it, in Christmas we get the story of “God with us.” At Easter we learn that “God is for us.” At Pentecost we tell the story that God is IN us. The Spirit residing in and among us makes it possible for us to do God’s work in the world, to share love, to build the kindom – and sometimes even to understand and be understood.

While the pandemic continues around the world, and right here at home, in the United States many people are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are making it possible to for life to change again. It may make sense to think of us as emerging from an overly small room. (Acknowledging, of course, the many who cared for us so well that they never were able to protect themselves. I hope for front line workers there is an emerging from fear.)

I believe that God is up to good among us, now, as God was up to good among the disciples then. I’m not arrogant enough to claim I know what God is up to, but I can sense…. something. This sermon is the last one I’ll preach exclusively online, at least for a while and perhaps for always. While we will keep online worship, we will also offer an informal outdoor worship service starting next week. Like the disciples, we’ll be in the city, able to be heard by those walking by. Maybe, God’s Spirit will make us audible in a new way as we emerge. But whatever God is up to, I know it is good. Amen

1Robert W. Wall “Refections on Acts 2:1-13” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol X, ed. Leader E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), p. 57.

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  • May 16, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Like Trees Planted by Streams of Water” based on Psalm 1 and John 17:6-19

According to the Psalm, we are supposed to be like trees planted by streams of water.

We are supposed to drink in the goodness of God, be fed by God’s living water, rest in God’s goodness, and maintain the life of faith at all times.

I’m….I’m not sure how you hear that right now. Here in May of 2021, I fear that some eyes have rolled so far into the back of their heads that they may not make it back, and others are laughing so hard at this premise that they can’t hear me yet. Those responses seem fair. Truthfully though, I worry that the majority of those listening/reading simply tuned out because it felt so absolutely irrelevant.

For me, at least, it isn’t though. It is absolutely relevant. I actually needed the reminder, because I’ve let the busy demands of life take precedence over making sure I’m soaking in God’s goodness. I’ve let the fears, anxieties, and pressures all around me IN, and forgot that the best way I have to deal with them is make sure that I’m “planted by streams of water” that let me have the strength to respond with love, compassion, and clarity.

I need these reminders rather a lot, because the pressures of the world to “preform” and “produce” and “matter” weigh rather heavily on me. I far too easily forget my own needs to be grounded and supported so I can offer grounding and support when it is needed most.

In the Gospel, Jesus is praying with awareness that he is about to leave his disciples, and he worries over them when he isn’t there to guide them. The prayer seems meant to be overheard, meant to serve as a reminder to them that they are still cared for by God.

The best way I know to remember I am cared for by God, like the best way I know to “be like trees planted by streams of water” is to engage in “Spiritual Disciplines.” Most people of profound faith have Spiritual Discipline – whether they call it that or not. Many people struggle to find their own form of Spiritual Discipline. Those people who have a Spiritual Discipline that they practice regularly believe it to be life changing and transformational. The only issue is, if you are a person who doesn’t have a practice of your own listening to those people who do – you start to feel like all your time should be spent in all their forms of Discipline.

The truth is that Spiritual Disciplines are as personal as our gifts and graces. We can’t just take on someone else’s way of connecting to God. Our tradition may give us forms to use, but even the forms need to be adapted to OUR relationships with God.

Sometimes in clergy circles, Spiritual Disciplines come up in an unhelpful way. This happens when every person is fully convinced that their life was better because of the way they reached to God (good), and that everyone else should try their way (not so good.)

The closest practice I know to one that “should” be universal is: bliss. That is, finding those things that bring us pure joy and spending as much time with them as we can.

Another helpful perspective on Spiritual Disciplines comes from the book “Dark Nights of the Soul” by Thomas Moore. Moore was a Roman Catholic Monk for the beginning of his life, but left the monastery when he was near 40 and now lives in NH with his wife and children. He has a whole bunch of degrees and functions as a psychologist. In this book he proposes that the darkness of life is an important part of life -even when it looks like depression. He has a model for respecting meaninglessness and accepting that God may be transforming people as if in a cocoon when they are drawn away from normal life. I’m finding it to be most helpful in preparing me for conversations with people (including myself) in struggle.

At one point in the book, Moore talks about catharsis, as a letting go of the crowdedness within so that the soul can sort through to what is important. I was startled as I read, because I finally understood that the Goal is NOT to take on all spiritual disciplines and become the perfectly disciplined spiritual person. Rather, the point is to use the tradition and our own creative energy to connect with God in exactly those ways that are life-giving.

This is a terribly obvious point. Hopefully you already knew it. But I probably would have claimed that I did too, at least until I felt freed by reading this. Here is an extended quote from his conversation on catharsis:

“My favorite kinds of contemplation include playing the piano, walking in a forest, sitting quietly in a church or house of worship, and even window shopping. I understand that the highest forms of mediation are pure and still and aim at an awareness free of distraction. But I also value the spirituality to be found in the concrete, every day world. Walking through a store, my attention is caught by beautiful things, and I can easily fall into deep reverie just looking at them. I find this a good way to be spiritual without criticizing ordinary life or the physical world. …

The general aim of catharsis is creative tranquility, an condition in which you are free from the pressing practical concerns to consider the bigger questions. The actual practice of contemplation may vary from one person to another, but some physical quieting helps start the process. Nature can help by providing an environment that stills a hyperactive mind. ….

Other spiritual practices may also clear out a crowded life. Religions teach fasting, retreat, vegetarianism, a spirit of poverty, neatness, cleanliness, moderation, and solitude – these familiar practices can be part of the busiest person’s life and give that life a spiritual dimension. In this sense, making your bed every morning can be a spiritual practice. This natural spirituality I am describing deepens the place from which you live and allows you to open your heart both to receive more from life and to give to others.” (Thomas Moore, “Dark Nights of the Soul” pages 52-54)

I want all of you to have ways of connecting to the Divine – which is also to say ways of making good decisions for your well-being and the well-being of those around you. I want you to know how to sort through to what is truly important and what is just superficial. I want your lives to be meaningful and your prayers to bring you inner strength.

I don’t care how you do that. But I care that you do.

Hopefully some of the ideas that Moore talked about may work for you, or some of the prayer practiced we’ve talked about in the past, or just things you’ve found along the way – by yourself or from someone who knew the Divine well. If not, I’m happy to talk it over more one on one.

This is a difficult time, in the world, in the church, and even in our own church. Stressors, anxieties, and fears abound. It can be difficult to hold on to our core self as the struggles press in on us. With God, though, we can increase our capacities. We can be like trees planted by streams of water – strong yet flexible, healthy, responsive, and able to withstand what comes at us.

We can’t control the world, other people, or even our own bodies. We can, however, connect with the Divine and regain the capacity to respond well to whatever comes at us. May we make the time for God, to receive hope, rest, and renewal.

Amen

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  • May 9, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Humans: Needing Love and Comfort”

(a sermon dialogue with Rev. Lynn Gardner of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Schenectady and Rev. Sara Baron of the First United Methodist Church of Schenectady)

Part 1: Our awareness of our need for mothering (which is our need to be loved, and comforted)

Lynn: It started when I was on my yoga mat. It was early one morning last spring. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I was up as the sun was rising, moving through familiar yoga asanas, gently stretching, moving, breathing. I was in child’s pose… curled over bent knees, forehead resting on the mat, when the crying began. Everything that my body had been holding in was let loose in a torrent of tears, growing into deep sobs. Worry, grief, fear, sadness, loneliness and anger, pouring out. My heart ached thinking of all those who were suffering alone or separated from anyone who was familiar.

On the day we were born and received the gift of our first breath we depended on our mothers, our parents, or other caring adults in order to survive. As we grew, those needs changed, but our need to be loved and cared for is still part of us. That morning on my yoga mat, I rocked, and cried, feeling the vulnerability of being human… that we need one another. This may be our vulnerability AND our strength.

Sara: The past year has been one of developing my identity as a mother. My child was born 51 weeks ago today. It has been a very long time since I’ve needed mothering as much as I have since I became a mother. It turns out that the capacity to give my child what he needs is dependent on having enough of my own needs met and, quite often, I can’t fulfill both sets of needs on my own, and am dependent on others to hold me up so I can hold him up.

I was raised upper middle class, and I’m white, and I have internalized the message that self-sufficiency is “good.” Which means I’m REALLY BAD at asking for help, and that hasn’t made me need it less. The pandemic has complicated EVERYTHING. When I needed help the most it felt least safe to receive it. When I hit the end of my capacity and could go no further, when tears filled my eyes and I simply could not do what I needed to do, when without love and comfort and support I could no longer offer love and comfort and support… I have spent this year learning that I need to be mothered well in order to mother well. For me, at least, this applies both to parenting AND to pastoring. To offer love and comfort to my congregation ALSO requires that I have something to give, and that means I have to reach out when I need love and comfort too.

Part 2: Stories of times we have received loving, comforting care when we needed it

Support can come in a wider range of formats than I ever knew. There was, for me, one day when everything I needed to do most profoundly exceeded my capacity to do it. Before that day was easier, after that day was easier, but on that day I could simply go no further. I remember texting 3 friends. It was August, and nothing felt safe, especially not in person. One friend got in the car to come help. Another stayed on the phone with me until she arrived and let me cry while being heard. The third texted back and forth all day assuring me that I was allowed to make things easier on myself, and it didn’t mean I was failing as a mother to do so.

Those three friends comforted me that day, they let their love for me become support when I needed it. I think it is fair to say that they mothered me, and BECAUSE they took care of me, I was able to take care of my child.

In some ways this story seems too small, and in other ways it seems … archetypal. Looking back at my life there are innumerable times when my pain or burden was too much to bear. In every one of them, I reached out for support. Sometimes I reached out directly to the Divine, which for me means I disappeared into nature and silence for the hours I needed before I could form words again. Other times I have reached out to family or friends (or my own pastor), and let them hold me up. It is in being held – in any medium- that I can regain my own self-regulation and find my way again.

Lynn: Isn’t it amazing when someone shows up in simple yet deeply caring ways? 21 years ago I went to stay at my parent’s home when my Mom was nearing the end of her life. She had been diagnosed with cancer just five weeks earlier. She was at home with hospice care, laying in a bed where she could look out and see her garden, and my father and sisters and I were caring for her and for one another. A long time friend called and asked if she could come by. She arrived with three hot-fudge brownie sundaes, one for me, one for her, and one for my Dad. Let’s go for a walk, she suggested. We walked and ate. She listened, and we cried and laughed together, and also held space for the comfort of shared silence. That was the most delicious sundae I have ever eaten.

Each of these moments in our lives have served to remind us that we are not self-sufficient, we do not walk or work alone. It is because of our connections that we are.. It is because we have been nurtured that we are functional and able to offer nurture.

Part 3: Growing us into capacity to give mothering

Sara: Our sweet baby is teething. It is miserable for everyone involved. We are very thankful in our house for pain medication. But sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes he hurts, and nothing we can do makes the hurt go away, and it is awful. In those moments, all we can do is be with him and assure him he isn’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough in the moment, but I also wouldn’t dream of letting him suffer alone.

There are many sources of pain in life, physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. In some cases we are able to do things that change them, like feeding people who are hungry. In many cases we cannot change reality, or the pain people experience, when they are grieving. In those cases all we can do is be with one another, and assure each other we aren’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough, but the difference between being alone and being supported is significant. Our congregations can be communities of practice… where we continue to learn about giving and receiving care.

This has been one of the worst parts of the pandemic, that the means of support and comfort we are used to offering grieving people have been taken away. I invite those who are safely ready and able to loosen their COVID restrictions to think about how to offer love and support now that wasn’t possible before.

Learning the limits of what comfort I can give has never felt enjoyable, but it seems like the capacity to be a mother grows along with my awareness of my own limitations.

Part 4: The Divine as Nurturer, and Faith as Subversive when it comes to nurture.

The Gospel lesson we read today in the United Methodist church instructs us to “abide in love,” and expounds eloquently on the subject. I believe that this is what faith is all about. In Christian and United Methodist lingo we talk about “sanctification” which is the process of letting go of whatever is not love and being filled up with love so that you can respond to every person in every moment with pure love. In our models, continued faith development is all aimed at sanctification. (John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement believed that people could reach perfection in love during their life times. 😉 I share that as an interesting historical fact.)

In real life though, things are complicated. In many circumstances it is not clear what the most loving response actually is. What looks from one angle like loving nurture looks from another angle like enabling. These days I find myself reminding myself several times a day about the process of emerging from cocoons. That is, when transformed creatures emerge from cocoons it is a slow and seemingly painful process. Over the years many well meaning humans have tried to ease creatures ways out of the cocoon, only to learn that the moths and butterflies are permanently damaged by having the process eased. There is a fine line to walk in care for others, and I find I am never clear which side of it I’m on.

Lynn: Receiving care can also be complicated. Sometimes we just need someone to help us, or for someone to comfort us, but we don’t ask, and feel resentful. Or we don’t know who to ask… or we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, or that someone else needs it more. And sometimes, it is so hard to just allow ourselves to be cared for… to really receive the love that is being offered.

Prior to seminary, I worked in child care for 20 years. Over those years, and while raising our daughter, I have held and rocked many a tired cranky little one. Whether you have done so yourself or not, I invite to imagine holding an overly-tired toddler, who is crying and pushing away, resisting their need for sleep with every ounce of energy they have. They are so tired… and so upset… not wanting to give up, to let go, and to sink into the arms that are holding them.

Unitarian Universalism affirms that each of us is worthy of love…. That we are each more than our worst mistake. That we are each worthy of care and comfort. We are all held by a larger Love that will not let us go… even when we struggle… even when we push away… I can imagine the Holy whispering, “shhh…. Shhhh….. I’m right here.”

Sara: I’m also deeply aware that while the Divine, faith, and Biblical teaching all call us to love, in our society the expectations around that love vary according to the bodies we occupy. Lynn and I have been reflecting on the human need to receive mothering – the human need to receive love and comfort – and suggesting that faith communities may be sources of giving good care so those in them can then give good care to the world. Yet, I keep thinking about the realities of “emotional labor” and the ways that female embodied people, and people of color, along with others thought in society to occupy subordinate positions are subliminally taught to offer care and nurture to those who are male embodied, white, and empowered. Kate Manne in “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny” talks about the ways emotional labor is thought to be the work of some and the privilege to receive of others, and how this is encouraged with “carrots” and enforced with “sticks.”

This awareness brings some of the deeper challenges of celebrating love and comfort into view. Humans need love and comfort. Humans can give love and comfort. But often the giving becomes the role of some and the receiving the roles of others. I believe that one of the subversive narratives of faith is inverting those roles, and making the giving of love, comfort, and nurture the role of all people – especially the ones in power.

So, dear ones, may we receive the wonderful mothering of the Divine and of the people of faith, and may we soak in love and comfort so that we are able to share it with abundance.

Amen

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  • May 2, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“On Being Pruned” based on 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8

While I was in college I lead a group of new freshman on an outdoor adventure trip. We were assigned to trail maintenance in a very remote part of Northern New Hampshire. It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip, but it turns out that a lot of trail maintance is actually killing small trees so that they don’t grown on the trail and I really deeply hated that. No matter how many times I reminded myself that by maintaining the trail and giving people a chance to experience that pristine wilderness I was PROTECTING most of the trees, I still felt uncomfortable with each one I killed.

Similarly, I’m not particularly good at pruning. I’m so afraid of going too far that I don’t go far enough. It would be enjoyable to claim that this is related to the value, “don’t hurt living things unless you have to” but that fails to notice that things you prune are things that NEED pruning. Pruning is a source of abundant life.

According to Gospel commentaries, grapevines are things that need pruning. The Five Gospels says, “Vines do not have branches, contrary to popular usage, but ‘canes.’ Each year canes are snipped from the vines and piled in the vineyard to be burned. … The vines will not bear good fruit, or fruit in abundance, if they are not pruned annually.”1 The metaphor loving writer of the Gospel of John suggests this is true of the followers of the way of Jesus as well. We too need regular pruning to “bear fruit.”

I suspect many of us feel similarly about pruning ourselves as I do about pruning any other living thing. It is uncomfortable, it is done with caution, we don’t want to go to far. And that means that often we don’t prune quite far enough.

This may feel like an unfortunate time to come across this Gospel, because the impact of the pandemic has been a desire to return to “normal” and profound objections to the ways our lives have been “pruned” from the outside beyond our control. But here is the Gospel anyway, and when we’re honest we note that even this awful pruning has had SOME silver linings.

Now, in John’s metaphor, God is the gardener, and God is the one doing the pruning. We are fairly passive to the pruning. We are definitely NOT in charge of self-pruning. 🙂 Phew. Likewise, we are not in charge of fruit production. Fruit comes from being connected to Jesus, and well pruned by God, and we are mostly PASSIVE fruit bearers. Fruit or lack there of isn’t really our fault. We are tended, rooted, and pruned to be the best fruit bearers we can be, and we can simply BE and God’s goodness will work through us.

Nice.

While I think that idea is incomplete, I also think it is one worthy of consideration.

Many of us TRY REALLY HARD ALL THE TIME, and this suggests that we can let go and God’s goodness will keep flowing. That is an important truth, if incomplete.

So if God is the gardener and the pruner, then who are we when we resist pruning? I suspect that we are vine “canes” that are holding on for dear life to canes that have already been snipped and berating ourselves that we can’t bring them back to life. There are these dead, decaying branches and we’re holding them in place willing them to grow again, and in doing so, missing the new life springing up within us.

Several years ago I watched a TED talk by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard entitled “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” Gilbert’s ideas have stayed with me ever since. He opens his talk by saying:

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

I’m hoping you already see how this relates to letting God’s pruning without fighting it! He states his thesis directly (don’t you love that?), “What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. “ As you might hope, Gilbert proves this point along the way, and then goes on to conclude:

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen. …when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It’s as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed on the timeline. It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. 2

That is, pruning happens whether we want it to or not, and either we can make peace with it and let it be, or we can fight with it, but it won’t change the fact that things change.

While I prefer it when I can read it with some verses missing, 1 John 4 is a very important chapter in the Bible for most people I know because it says the thing they believe most, “God is love.” It says it strongly too, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. …Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their siblings, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen,

cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (11, 20). Perhaps this fits the idea that loving God and loving other people are two sides of the same coin, inseparable though they can appear to be different. These claims about God, that God is love, and that loving people is a way of loving God, are the lens through which I see the entirety of the Bible. I remain grateful that it is there, and available to be used.

John chapter 15 goes on to sound a whole lot like 1 John 4. The Vine and Branches metaphor morphs quickly to point out that the fruit that God is looking for is the practice of abiding in love. So both of them point the question: what impairs love and what encourages it? If we are being continually pruned by God, what helps us let go of what we’re done with, and what helps us connect with what God is up to next? Or, in the metaphor, how do we let go of the pruned and dead branches so there is space for new growth?

Perhaps the best thing we can do for now is notice. We can notice what has been pruned, so we can let it go and we can notice what is growing so we can watch it growing. Perhaps this passage is exactly right for right now. We aren’t the gardener, we aren’t in charge, but we can – at least – stop impeding the Gardener’s work and instead notice what it is.May it be so. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 453.

2 Dan Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self” Ted Talk, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self/transcript?utm_campaign=social&utm_content=talk&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=soci al-science#t-308201 given on March 2014 accessed on April 29, 2021.

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“Three Days?  Can You Count?” based on Hosea 5:15-6:6…

  • April 18, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

According
to the Gospels, Jesus was killed on Friday night.  Easter was on
Sunday, and the first experiences of resurrection happened before
sunrise.  That is a difference of about 36 hours.  Which, if I’m
honest, is a VERY WEAK definition of “three days.” It is a
stretch to say, well, there was part of Friday, and all of Saturday,
part of Sunday, which is three different days.  

Normally,
three days is 24 hours times 3= 72 hours.  So Friday night to Monday
night.  Or, you might say, Friday – then the next day is Saturday,
the second day is Sunday, the third day is Monday.

Am
I the only one who has been quietly annoyed by this for years?  Yeah,
I am?  I can live with that.

This
has made me curious though, as to why Friday night to Sunday morning
was defined as 3 days, because doing so was DEFINITELY an intentional
choice meant to fit Jesus’s story into an existent framework.  
Otherwise it wouldn’t feel so forced.

(If
you are already bored, I invite you to stick with me anyway, it isn’t
going to take that long and it is more worth it than you might
expect.)   It seems Luke was basing the 3 days off of the Hosea
passage

‘Come, let us return to the
Lord;
   for it is he who has torn, and he will
heal us;
   he has struck down, and he will bind us
up.
After two days he will revive us;
   on
the third day he will raise us up,
   that we
may live before him.  (6:1-2)

This
clearly lists 3 days, but the meaning of the passage seems a little
bit ambiguous.  However, if you either read all of Hosea to figure
out what this means, or trust the work of scholars who have done so
(I’ve done both), then it starts to make sense that what they’re
talking about is the renewal of God’s covenant with ancient
Israel.  This is the theme of the whole book of Hosea.  The
questions of Hosea center around what God is going to do since the
people have been unfaithful to the covenant.  The passage we read
today is about God choosing to renew the covenant, despite the
people’s unfaithfulness.

And,
a reasonable person might ask, what does THAT have to do with 2 days
and 3 days?  And really, what does it have to do with Jesus, or say,
us?  

I’m
so glad you asked.1

The
reference to 2 days and 3 days is based on the story of Moses sharing
the covenant in Exodus 19.  Three months after the people had left
Eygpt, they got to Sinai, and Moses went up the mountain to be with
God.  God told Moses to say, “You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to
myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you
shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the
whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a
holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the
Israelites.’” (Exodus 19:4-6)  Aka – you are going to be a
sign of my love to the world.   That WAS the covenant, and as it
got expanded and explained more it becomes clear that living out the
covenant is about how they treated each other, and the vulnerable in
their midst, and eventually even their neighboring nations.

Exodus
19 goes on:

Then Moses had told the words of
the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses: ‘Go to the people
and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their
clothes and prepare for the third day, because on the third
day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all
the people. You shall set limits for the people all around, saying,
“Be careful not to go up the mountain or to touch the edge of it.
Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch
them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows; whether animal or
human being, they shall not live.” When the trumpet sounds a long
blast, they may go up on the mountain.’ So Moses went down from the
mountain to the people. He consecrated the people, and they washed
their clothes. And he said to the people, ‘Prepare for the third
day; do not go near a woman.’ (9-15)

And,
at the end of those 3 days the people “met” God.  The story says
the experience was like the mountain being wrapped in smoke, and
fire, and earthquake, and thunder.  It appears it was quite awe
inspiring.  Then Moses gets called back up the mountain and that is
when Moses was given the 10 commandments and the rest of the
expectations of God for how the people were to behave to each other
and in worship.

So
why did the early Christians chose to tell the story of the
resurrection of Jesus as happening on the third day?  Probably
because it was awe inspiring like that experience of the people of
“meeting” God.  Likely also because it fit into this framework of
restoration from Hosea, and Jesus’s teaching had been about restoring
the relationships between God and the people and the people and each
other.  Likely, also, this relates to the early Christian
understanding that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was a
NEW covenant between God and the people, one the people couldn’t mess
up.  As such, it made sense to tell it in the form of the most
important covenant story of the Scriptures as they knew them.  

Thus
the choice to force Friday night to Sunday morning into a 3 day
framework.

In
Luke we’re told that A LOT OF THINGS happened on that “third day”
Sunday.  The women found the empty tomb, they told the disciples,
Peter also saw the tomb, two other disciples walked to Emmaus –
experienced the risen Christ –  and walked back, and our passage
today starts with “while they were still talking about this,”
meaning the story of those who’d walked to Emmaus.  Today’s passage
is still set on that “third day.”

The
story wants to emphasize that Jesus wasn’t a ghost or an angel, but
rather than he’d been physically resurrected.  The idea is that
ghosts and angels don’t EAT, but living beings do.  Having eaten, the
story says, he explained, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24-46b-47)  As this
is a story of the early Christian community, we can use it to help
ourselves understand how they saw this new covenant.  They did a nice
job putting the “three day” thing there to help make sense of the
covenant, right?

This
new covenant, at least in this passage, seems to be centered on
“repentance” and forgiveness of sins, right?   Repentance makes
easy sense to me, it fits with the teaching that Jesus was sharing in
his lifetime of ministry, “Repent and believe, the kin(g)dom of God
is at hand.”  That is, turn from the fear-filled ways of the world,
get centered in God, and participate in the kindom of relationship,
sharing, compassion, and abundance, and as you do so, the kindom will
gain strength until it comes in completion.

However,
in the Jewish Annotated Bible it is mentioned that in Jewish thought,
God is always ready to forgive the sins of the repentant.2
So, what is this about? Why did the early Christian community think
that forgiveness of sins was so central?  This feels REALLY
important, because I still hear many Christians who think the entire
Christian story is one of forgiveness, and I’ve always struggled to
understand why, especially when God’s forgiveness was already
available before Jesus.3

In
the commentary on the Hosea passage, Dr. Gail Yee wrote, “The
period of chastisement when God rends the people is intended to
motivate their repentance/return.  This doctrine of correction is
particularly characteristic of deuteronomistic and wisdom literature,
in which the period of the Babylonian exile was regarded as a
traumatic time when the people recognized their guilt and returned to
God.”4
When I read that, a light went off.  The Jewish people in the time of
Jesus lived a life of oppression under the realm of the Roman Empire.
This likely felt like a new form of Exile, an exile at home.  So, as
their ancestors in faith had done before them, they told themselves
the story that their oppression was God’s chastisement, and that if
they returned to God’s ways they’d be freed again.  Return and
restoration in this story are dependent on both the people’s
repentance and God’s forgiveness.

And
suddenly the Christian story itself makes sense.  They’re thinking
about communal sin, and global politics, and trying to please God
into making their lives better.  Which MAKES SENSE for faithful human
meaning makers to do.  But knowing
that frees me to tell my own faith story, which is that God was with
them in oppression, and working towards freedom (including through
Jesus) but hadn’t been punishing them to begin with.  God’s
desires for repentance were about wanting to gift the people with
full and abundant lives and building the kindom, … not about proof
of worthiness.

And
that, dear ones, brings us to today.  We have been in our own “exile
at home” for more than a year now, and consciously or unconsciously
there have been a lot of questions of “why did this happen to us?”
Those are normal, healthy, human questions.  I suspect there has
been some creeping fear that the answer is “because we messed up”
and challengingly, that seems true.  But that doesn’t mean anything
about God punishing us.  We messed up by not trusting scientists, and
not taking the long view, and not caring for the vulnerable, and not
putting lives before profits.  This pandemic isn’t God’s punishment,
but it is reflective of our collective “sins” so to speak.

I
hope and pray that we, our communities, our country, and our world,
will repent (especially the “first world).  I hope we will learn.
I hope we will remember how interconnected we all are and that if
anyone is vulnerable to illness, we are ALL vulnerable to illness.  I
hope we will decide to transform the ways societies work, to care for
all and bring life abundant to all.  I hope we will remember all of
God’s covenants, and work with God in building the kindom, the
beloved community, peace on earth.  

The
good news, is that the resurrection story tells us that what seems
impossible (like global change into care and compassion) is possible!
May God help us, and may we help God!  Amen

1 Can
anyone tell the Pastor misses preaching in person?

2 Amy
Jill Levine “Footnote on Luke 24:47” in The Jewish
Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible
Translation, edited by Amy-Jill
Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 151.

3 Truthfully
I have a lot of critique of the idea, but not enough time to share
it.  I’m happy to talk it over if you’d like.

4 Gail
Yee, “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:3” in The New Interpreter’s
Bible Volume VII ed. by Leander
E. Keck et al, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 249.

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

April 18, 2021

Uncategorized

“Journey with Jesus” based on Psalm 133 and John…

  • April 11, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

Have
you ever thought about what it would be like to journey with Jesus?
I’m not actually talking about spiritual metaphor here, I suspect if
I was many people could openly say, “Yes, that’s my life!”  I
mean, what it was like for the first followers of Jesus to journey
around Galilee and later Judah with the historical Jesus.

Being
a part of the 21st century, my capacity for 1st
century historical accuracy is lacking, so I’m sometimes hesitant to
to project myself into those experiences.  Nevertheless, it feels
like I can’t enter into this story of “Doubting Thomas” without
letting my questions about journeying with Jesus come front and
center.

I
wonder how often those first followers were uncomfortable, especially
in the face of Jesus’ teaching.  This is likely projection on my
part, a reflection of how challenged I am by what he taught.  “Love
your enemy,” “give to anyone who asks of you,” “everyone is
your neighbor,” and  “love your neighbor as you love yourself”
are all important, profound teachings.  They’re also ones I fail to
live up to every day.  Did the disciples squirm like I do?  Or is it
that I come from a position of relative power and wealth that leads
me to squirm, and those who followed him more often had nothing and
could more easily accept his teaching?

What
about the parables?  Even the Jesus Seminar believes that Jesus
probably taught in parables.  The thing about parables is that
they’re lessons that keep on giving.  Every time you think about
them, you can see something new.  They grow with you.  This is,
obviously, amazing as a teaching tool.  But was it hard, as a first
follower, to be stretched and grown every day?  Did it feel like
drinking from a fire hose?  Did they ever feel like they got it, they
knew what he was up to, they were following along?

I
wonder too about the pace of life for those first followers.  The
gospel writer of Mark likes the word “immediately” and seems to
tell a rapid fire story.  But that just means he skips the quiet,
slow parts.  Did they linger of meals, talking and laughing?  Or was
everything GO-GO-GO like in the midst of an advocacy campaign with a
legislative deadline?  I suspect it was the former.  I don’t think
you actually build a movement that lasts unless you work at the pace
of human trust, and that pace requires a lot of talking, laughing,
story telling, meaning making, and even sitting around the fire in
quiet wonder.  

Some
of my questions really add up to, what kind of spiritual development
happened to those who were following Jesus?  The first followers were
members of a powerful faith tradition already, one that Jesus was
using and drawing from.  They were also, mostly, disenfranchised
people without any reason to have faith or trust in the systems of
the day.  They were marginalized people.  (And that’s where I have to
be so careful to pay attention to the fact that I am not one, and not
to project myself more than I should.)  In some ways, marginalized
people have an advantage in seeing what God is up to in the world,
because God is always up to upsetting the status quo to allow more
people to thrive AND survive and that is GOOD NEWS for the
marginalized people but threatening for those who are not.

And
they were spending all their time with Jesus, and with each other,
and that feels like the very best set up for rapid faith development.
Jesus was deeply connected with the Divine, likely a mystic, and
ready and able to put the needs of others before his own.  In my
life, people like that have taught me SO much, and I’d imagine being
with Jesus for a year would change EVERYTHING.

I’m
wondering this because of the easy way with which Thomas is able to
express his doubt to his fellow disciples.  This is an expression of
a rather well developed faith.  I want to consider a few “stages of
faith development” according to James Fowler, and wonder about
where the disciples were with those.  Yet, I want to be a little bit
careful. It can be really easy to hear about stages like these and
try to characterize one’s self as HIGH as one can, as well as to
deride others for being in LOWER stages.  That is NOT the point.  In
fact, I suspect that most of us move around between stages based on
the level of stress we’re under, the strength of the teaching we’d
received on any given topic, the level of stress around us, and the
number of other things we’re trying to do at the same time. God is
with people wherever we are, and while we do want to “develop” as
people of faith, part of that development is making peace with the
honesty of where we are and being peaceable about where others are –
without judgement.  This is also to say that if you feel like you’ve
moved backward over the past, say 15 months, then have grace with
yourself – that means you’ve been under unsustainable stress.

The
least developed “adult faith”1
is one that easily yields to authority and quietly pushes away any
conflicts in faith in order to minimize the threat to faith.  To help
grasp the stages, I think it may be instructive to see how the Psalm
might be heard from within this stage.  The Psalm’s opening verse,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!” can be heard as an encouragement to keep the peace, quiet
one’s own questions, and silence the concerns of those who raise
issues – in the name of “unity.”  Unfortunately, this
understanding of unity has the impact of silencing people who are
marginalized and preventing growth.  Yet, it is easy to see how it
can be heard that way, right? “How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!”  So— be quiet about issues
and experience the good and pleasant!!  Thomas is well past this
stage when he easily, immediately, questions the statement of TEN of
his friends and faith companions.  

The
next level of “adult faith”2
is characterized by angst and struggle as the person takes
responsibility for their own faith, instead of just following
blindly.  In this stage is greater nuance, greater open-mindedness,
and more potential conflict.  How might people in this stage hear,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!”?  I wonder if the word “unity” becomes more complicated
here, or if “kindred” are subdivided.  Is this a place where the
unity of the kindred reflects similar thinking groups, but there are
several different areas of unity?  Does challenging authority become
a means of separation?  (There are many other possible answers.)  It
is clear that Thomas is AT LEAST at this stage, as he speaks his own
truth clearly.  He stands in his own integrity whether anyone is with
him or not, although it is worth pointing out that he remains with
the whole, and that might suggest that this sort of unity is large
enough for everyone’s integrity.

The
next level of “adult faith” seems like the one all of the
disciples were in the midst of transitioning into after the death of
Jesus.  It generally comes after a significant crisis, and James
Fowler calls this “Conjunctive Faith.”  This is faith that can
handle paradoxes and mystery, and let go of pieces of tradition or
faith from prior stages that don’t work anymore.  It is a stage and a
space where multiple truths can be held simultaneously, without
conflict.  So how might, “How very good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity!” be heard here?  Perhaps this is
when “unity” becomes about seeking each other’s well-being
regardless of differences of perspective or differences of need.
Unity doesn’t require similarity, only love, and love flows from God.

I
cannot tell for sure if Thomas or the rest where in this stage yet.
I think most likely they were growing into it, and this is a story
about that transition.  This is, after all, a story remembering that
different people have different experiences and rather than all the
value going to the ones with greater experience, there is an
acknowledged blessing of those who follow without the experiences.
This is a story that anticipates us – the ones who did not
experience the first resurrection first hand, and yet celebrate it.  

There
is, for Fowler, a rare final stage of adult faith development, one
neither this story nor most people of faith reach.  I suspect that
most of the disciples reached it by the end of their lives, and I
further suspect it is what John Wesley was talking about when he
suggested that people could reach perfection in living God’s love
during their lifetimes.  I think that people in that stage would
hear, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together
in unity!” and immediately grasp that “kindred” is universal
and “unity” comes when all the people have the peace that comes
after the needs of justice are met.

Was
it because the disciples had time with Jesus that they reached the
final stage?  Or was it because they lost Jesus and had to find the
ways to go on that they did?  Or both?  Or neither?  It is
unknowable.

As
United Methodists, we are taught about that idea of reaching
perfection in living God’s love during our lifetimes.  It is most
often called “going on to perfection” and most frequently it
serves to make me sad when I realize how far I am from that goal.
Yet, when I slow down enough to listen to the voice of God, I hear
God saying that I don’t have to be there yet, God hasn’t asked that
of me.  Rather, God says, I’m asked to be where I am, and be open to
the next means of grace that will help me walk along my journey.
And, that seems fair, because God is a just God, and God doesn’t ask
more of us than we can give, and what we can give is based on who we
are today and where we are on our faith journey.

Which
means, really that I’m back to the metaphorical journey with Jesus,
and am encouraging you to think about how your journey is going, and
what the next steps are, and to check to see if you need any help
along the way.  I can think of no clearer role for the church than to
help each other as we move along our journeys with Jesus.  Or, in
other words, we help each other move onto perfect.  May God help us
all!!  Amen

1James
W. Fowler Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development
and the Quest for Meaning (San
Francisco: Harper&Row, 1981).  Fowler’s stage 3:
Synthetic-Conventional”
Faith.  Summary found at
https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/06/12/the-stages-of-faith-according-to-james-w-fowler/
(I have and love the book, but thank God for other people’s
thoughtful work.)

2 Fowler’s
stage 4: “Individuative-Reflective
Faith”

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

April 11, 2021

Uncategorized

“Quiet Resurrections” based on Jeremiah 31:1-6 and Matthew 28:1-10

  • April 4, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

It is really easy to
miss the point of Easter by focusing too much on what happened ~2000
years ago.  There is extensive debate among people who debate such
things about what FORM Jesus’s body took after resurrection, which is
a clear indication that a lot of people miss the point.  However it
was that Jesus’s disciples transformed from the frightened men who
ran away from the cross to the leaders of the developing church who
faced their own persecution with courage, and continued Jesus’s
ministry in their own lives – that thing that happened was
resurrection. They talked about it as Jesus returning to them,
meeting with them, guiding them, explaining things to them.  I have
no idea where the line between metaphor and reality, memory and
presence was in that, nor do I think it matters.  

I think it matters
that they became convinced that not even the Empire’s power of death
– they greatest power the Empire had – held any sway over them.
I think it matters they moved from self-protection to courage.  I
think it matters they moved from scattering to consolidating their
relationships.  I think it matters they moved from the amygdala
response of “danger! Protect self!” to the pre-frontal cortex
questions of “how do we tell the stories of Jesus so others can
hear them?” and “how do we distribute food fairly despite
cultural differences?” and “how much do we take on and how much
do we train other people to do?”  They, themselves, moved from the
fear of death to the fullness of life.  That’s resurrection.  

And the key to all
of it, is that the power of resurrection that moves us from the fear
of death to the fullness of life is a CONTINUAL gift from God that
enriches ALL of our lives, and empowers us in our darkest moments.

Truth be told
though, given the rather hugeness of the original story, everything
else can pale in comparison.  And because of that, I think we
sometimes miss the power of resurrection in our lives, because we’re
looking for things that are bigger and flashier than how God mostly
ends up working.  So, I offer this example from my own life, of what
I’d like to call a “quiet resurrection.”

When I was a kid, in
gym class, we were expected to test for the “Presidential Fitness
Test” every year, and every year I failed the running portions.
Alas, I told myself, “I’m no good at running.”  As I got older, I
continued to fail every running test my physical education teachers
put in front of me.  Eventually my narrative switched to, “I’m just
not in good shape.”  Sure, I did lots of physical activity all the
time, but CLEARLY I was failing, and CLEARLY that was an indication
that I was “not in good shape.”

That story stuck
with me.  By seminary I jogged regularly, but since it was slowly,
and since I still got winded, I told myself “I’m just not in good
shape.”  Later, as I’d climb mountains with friends, I’d be
noticeably the most winded and make jokes about “being in bad
shape.”  It had become part of my identity.

Five years ago,
after Easter, I got a cold.  Truthfully, this is common enough for
pastors and church workers.  The intense work of trying to make Holy
Week and Easter meaningful experiences for our churches means a drop
in adrenaline at the end of it, and then people get sick.  That time,
the cold became a cough.  Normal enough.  A month later I went to the
doctor because the cough just wouldn’t subside.  Sure enough, I had
bronchitis.  But that wasn’t the whole story.  When the PA was
listening to my lungs, “something sounded wrong, more wrong than
just bronchitis.”  After a serious of tests, my doctor named what I
experienced as “exercised induced asthma” and gave me an inhaler
to use before cardio exercise.

At first, this just
felt like a new way of saying I was broken, because I was so deeply
in that frame.  But, what followed was, for me, miraculous.  Suddenly
my workouts were… productive.  I got BETTER.  Also, I could
breathe!  And ever so slowly it occurred to me that the issue hadn’t
been my own failure, a lack of exercise, or not trying hard enough –
even though I’d been telling myself that for decades.  It was simply
physiological.  In fact, it hadn’t even been that I’d been “out of
shape” for all those years.  Rather, I had an undiagnosed condition
that impaired me.

It has taken a
shockingly long time for all of this to penetrate my self talk.  I’d
gotten so used to thinking of myself as an utter athletic failure,
that I’d failed to notice that the goal of adult fitness is to have
ways to move your body that are FUN and also promote health.  When it
comes to that standard, I’m pretty good at being athletic. (Huh,
never said THAT before.)

I’ve heard from many
other people over the years about the impact of diagnosis that feel
similar to this, including in mental health.  Varieties on the theme
of “oh, it isn’t just because I wasn’t trying hard enough” or
“there is a NAME for what I’m struggling with” or “other people
find this hard too, I’m not alone.”  (Of course, not all diagnoses
feel this way, of course.  But some do, and that’s what I’m talking
about.)

So, maybe for some
of you, it will make sense when I say that for me, having a little
inhaler open my lungs so I can exercise, and having that experience
free me from a hurtful narrative about myself, was a significant
experience of resurrection.  It freed me to be try more things, be
more playful, enjoy life more!  Those things matter.

The stories we
tell ourselves about ourselves can be impediments to the rich full
lives that God wants us to live, and they can be impediments to our
responses to God’s calls on us to build the kindom.  Easter is
the story of resurrection, the story of God’s power of LIFE over
death.  We’re so busy telling ourselves and God that “I can’t”
based on stories that aren’t true, that we miss God responding, “Oh
honey, you CAN.”  (God may use different endearments with you.)

Many times in life a
skill or story is important to getting us through a moment – but
the SAME skill or story becomes an impediment to growth later on.
Switching around the way we see something can change our whole
experience of it.  Reframing an experience, or a story can make space
for God’s transforming work in our lives.  

The challenge quite
often is that we don’t see our own framing, which makes it hard to
notice it and consider adapting it.  This is one of the reasons that
therapists are so useful, they’re particularly trained to noticing
and pointing out dated framing.  This is also a reason why we talk to
friends and family – because outside perspective can make a huge
difference in helping us see!  And, I think this is a reason why
contemplative prayer is such a gift in people’s lives.  As we develop
the skills to be quietly present to God and ourselves, as we
disengage from the frantic pace of life, as we allow our thoughts to
slow down – we are MAKING SPACE for grace to move and show us new
ways.

These little, quiet
resurrections may not seem like enough, but that’s only from a human
perspective.  When God is part of one small thing, and another small
thing, those two small things together add up to more than their
parts.  (Aka, God is willing to override the rules of math in God’s
commitment to grace and the kindom.)  When many little resurrections
are added together, lives become more whole, and as lives become more
whole there is more and more space for that abundant life to expand
to more and more people, and more and more of the kindom is built.
What God is up to is definitely enough.

After all, it was
only one resurrection 2000 or so years ago, and we’re still seeing
the rippling effects.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

April 4, 2021

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

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“Protest Parade and State Sponsored Violence” based on  Psalm…

  • March 28, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

Because
of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Cross in “The Last
Week” I have been convinced that the first “Palm Sunday” parade
was an intentional protest in response to increased military presence
in Jerusalem of the Roman Empire for Passover.  

Those
who have been listening to me preach for years are familiar with this
concept, and this year I’ll be taking it in a new direction, but
first I want to bring everyone else on board with this idea, as it
can sound quite different from what I learned in Sunday School as a
kid.

I
think the key to understanding the protest is to think about
Passover, and what it is.  Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating
God’s work to free God’s people from oppression from a foreign
government when they felt powerless to help themselves.  

So
it might not be surprising that the Roman Empire, which had power and
control over the Ancient Jewish lands, got a little bit uncomfortable
when the city was overrun with devout Jews celebrating Passover.  Nor
would it be particularly surprising that Passover was a time when
people tried to reclaim autonomy, the faith of their ancestors, the
sanctity of their Temple, and the right to the fruits of their labor.
After all, the Hebrew Bible itself sets a rich vision for a just
society, and the ways that wealth flowed from the poor to the rich in
the Roman Empire (and every empire before, during, and since) was the
OPPOSITE of that vision.

It
might even be good to remember that in 66 CE the was a revolt by the
Jewish population that lasted for 4 years.  The final result was the
destruction of Jerusalem along with the Second Temple, and hundreds
of thousands of deaths.  So the Roman Empire’s perception of threat
wasn’t actually wrong.  The city and its many many Passover pilgrims
were primed for revolt.

And
that’s why the Roman governor came to Jerusalem from his normal digs
on the Mediterranean along with horses, flags, music, and a
significant number of soldiers prepared to take down riots. It was an
intentional show of force, meant to tamp down revolutionary
enthusiasm as well as efficiently deal with anyone who dared to start
anything.  All of this is not unlike crucifixion itself which was a
particularly horrid form of capital punishment done in public to
those who lead VIOLENT REVOLTS against the Roman Empire to attempt to
discourage others from doing so.

The
Governor’s procession came in the West gate, as the Governor’s home
was to the west of the city.  The big shiny military parade was an
annual event, something easy to anticipate.  So, Jesus and his
followers staged a counter-parade coming in from the East gate.
Instead of flags with the golden eagle of Rome, the people waved Palm
branches – the symbol of ancient Judea.  Instead of “Hail Caesar,
prince of peace” the people shouted “Hosanna” which means “God
save us!”  And let’s be clear, “God save us from our oppressors.”
(The name Jesus and the word “Hosanna” come from the same Hebrew
root.  Jesus literally means “God saves.”)  They went on to say,
according to Mark, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord!   Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna
in the highest heaven!“   Instead of being passively awed by the
display of violent capacity as in the western parade, the people put
their lives on the line by laying their outer garments (often the
only protection they had from the elements) on the road for Jesus’s
colt to walk on.  

So,
to cut to the chase, Jesus appears to be staking a claim to the
rightful kingship of Israel, which suggests that then the Roman
Empire is not the rightful king.  Jesus is having a protest against
the Empire.  BUT, it was a NONVIOLENT one, just so we’re clear.

According
to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus also engaged in a protest at the
Temple complex.  Both protests appear to have been wildly popular,
and the people were following Jesus and claiming him as God’s
deliverer (read: save-r).  Thus, the authorities got scared.  Thus,
they started to work to take him down, disperse his movement, and
threaten any who would try to follow in his footsteps as leader.
Thus the death on the cross even though the protests were NONVIOLENT.

Not
to give the ending away, but the presence of Jesus followers
remembering and embodying this story 2000 years later is a good
indication that the Roman Empire may have had the power to kill
Jesus, but it didn’t have the power to stop the Body of Christ.  But,
alas, I get a week ahead of myself.

Most
years I like to contrast the ways of God from the ways of Rome, and
to clarify that there was nothing particularly wrong with the Roman
Empire – it is the way that pre-industrial agricultural domination
systems work – and at the core it is the way ALL domination systems
work, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, humanity was WAY
into domination systems.

But
this year, the story of Jesus engaging in acts of public protest, and
as a result having the authorities of the day send a violent guard to
grab him in the middle of the night, convict him based on false
testimony, and kill him in a way the State itself said was unjust
(PEACEFUL revolt) is all just hitting too close to home.

Last
summer the Governor put in place an executive order, in response to
Black Lives Matter protests,  requiring each local government in N.Y.
State to adopt a policing reform
plan that will maintain public safety while building mutual trust and
respect between police and the communities they serve. I have been
paying attention to what has happened in Schenectady and it is NOT
GOOD.

Here
in Schenectady, well after activists had release 13 demands1
that included an end to knee holds on people’s heads or necks, a
video was released of a police officer using a knee hold during an
arrest.2
In response to outcry, the police banned knee holds.  

What
followed was a fraught process that added up to the police pushing
through the police department’s OWN ideas of what police reform
should look like.  Which a problem.  No one can claim things are OK
here.  We are not, after all, a city without a record of our own –
Andrew Kearse was a man of color who died in police custody in 2017.
We know we have parts of our city that are profoundly over-policed.
We know that the police end up being called into situations with
mental health crises, and are not trained or capable of responding,
and things go very badly. That is why there is a desire to move some
of the police funding to social workers who can respond with
training!

This
past week, our city council passed the police reform report put
forward by the police department.  Upon careful inspection the ban on
knee holds on people’s heads and necks …. as been revoked.  Knee
holds are, apparently, back in.  Similarly, there is something called
“pain control” that I didn’t even want to google, but refers to
controlling people by hurting them.  I’m quite confident that this
isn’t the way humans treat people that they see as fellow humans,
much less God’s beloveds.

It
all feels to me to be far too familiar to the Jesus story.  Jesus was
inconvenient to people in authority.  He empowered “nobodies.”
He helped the community work together.  He questioned authority,
including questioning economic practice.  He stood up for God’s
visions, God’s people, God’s dreams of justice.  And it was so
threatening that they killed him to silence him.

Friends,
I have on some of my worse days, had to hold down a person who was in
the midst of a crisis to prevent the person from harming self or
others.  I hate it.  It turns my stomach, even years later, to think
about it.  But we were able to stop him without harming him, or
putting pressure on his head or neck.  

And
many, many, MANY times in my life I have responded to people in the
midst of crises, people hijacked by their amygdalas, people out of
their own control.  And 99.something% of the time, people can regain
control with just TALKING.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to dehumanize
anyone, accused of any crime, by seeking to control their actions
with pain or with a knee on their head or neck.  EVER.  We need to
keep talking about this – to each other, to the police chief, to
the mayor, to city council, AND to the governor’s office.  The plan
submitted by our city is NOT sufficient police reform for our
community.

Next
week we will be celebrating Easter, God’s incredible powers of life
that overcome even death.  But this week we need to be unsettled by
the world’s powers of death, and violence, and who they’re used
against.  

Jesus
was the victim of state sponsored violence.  Who else is like him,
today?  Amen

1http://www.allofusuntitledandfree.com/

2https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/us/schenectady-police-officer-knee-on-man-video/index.html

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

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“God’s Table Extended” based on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and 1…

  • March 21, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

Rabbi
Rafi Spitzer of congregation Agudat Achim in Niskayuna, led an
amazing workshop this week entitled “People of the Library: An
Introduction to Talmudic Literature and the Mythic Transmission of
Jewish Tradition for Clergy of Other Faiths.”  Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate is a VERY cool organization, and I learned a lot.  

Rabbi
Spitzer talked about the roots of modern Rabbinic Judaism as emerging
in the period after the destruction of the 2nd
Temple (70-200 CE).  This is the same period as the formation of most
of the Christian texts.  Jesus lived earlier, of course, but most
scholars date the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to 70 CE
because it mentions the destruction of the Temple.

That
is, both Modern Judaism and Christianity-As-We-Know-It (as a separate
faith tradition) emerged after, and in the response to Rome’s
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  It was in making sense of
this horrific disaster that new expressions of God’s ways in the
world emerged.

This
is particularly interesting to me because the Hebrew Bible was
written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the
First Temple in 587-586 BCE, when the Jewish leaders and scholars
were sent into exile.  The stories, of course, were much older, but
they were written down then, and that means that they were written
down with the question “why did this happen to us?” at the
forefront.

That
is, the Hebrew Bible gets written down and tries to make sense of
death, destruction, and disaster.  The majority of the “New
Testament” gets written down and tries to make sense of death,
destruction, and disaster, AND concurrently the Jewish Mishnah gets
written down and tries to make sense of death, destruction, and
disaster.  

It
seems to indicate our faith traditions are deeply rooted in trying to
make sense of death, destruction, and disaster, or that God is up to
new things when prior systems are destroyed, or that in trying to
preserve what used to be we end up making new things possible, or
that God can bring good even out of bad, or maybe all of the above.

In
any case, I think it is interesting, and worth continuing to ponder.
Especially now, when we have experienced death, destruction, and
disaster, and are wondering what we and God will be up to next.

Our
Hebrew Bible Lesson today from Jeremiah speaks lovingly of the “new
covenant” between God and the people.  This is such a foundational
idea in Christianity that we may not know that this passage is the
ONLY time such an idea emerges in the Hebrew Bible.  

“Foundational,”
you say, “why?”  Think of the words “old testament” and “new
testament” and remember that testament is a synonymous with
covenant here.  This is how some people made sense of the whole
Christian tradition.  That said, there are far too many who take
these words to mean that the Hebrew Bible is old, or outdated, or
replaced, and that is problematic.  We intentionally use the words
“Hebrew Bible” to recognize our shared biblical tradition.

Anyway,
back to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah is a prophet of the exile, and  for much
of the book Jeremiah warns of the dangers of the impending exile.
However, once the exile happens, Jeremiah’s tone changes, and he
turns to comfort and hope.  This passage is part of that, promising a
return to God’s promises and relationships.  The promise is
particularly full, as it speaks to both the northern and southern
kingdoms, the wholeness of Ancient Israel.  It is also full in that
the new covenant will not be dependent on the people’s faithfulness.
God will take care of it.

“I
will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall
they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,”
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,
says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their
sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33b-34, NRSV)

It
is a lovely vision, in some ways the ultimate comfort: a relationship
with God one can’t mess up.

The
Christian church has claimed this covenant as their own.  Take these
words from our communion liturgy, “By the baptism of his suffering,
death, and resurrection you gave birth to your church, delivered us
from slavery to sin and death, and made with us a new covenant by
water and the Spirit.” (UM Hymnal, page 9).  

I
have some deeply mixed feelings about this claim.  On the one hand,
it fits with my assumption that our status as beloveds of God is
based on the nature of God (grace) and not on our performance.  On
the other hand, it seems rather profoundly to miss out on the idea
that God wants us to take care of each other, and that our actions
matter in the building of the kindom.

Or
maybe I’m exaggerating.  After all, Jeremiah’s idea isn’t that the
people ignore God’s wishes.  Rather it is that they know God and
God’s grace so well that it is inherent in them and they live it out
naturally.  (I have mixed feelings about this too – in that it is
lovely, but simply not true of Christians I know.)

In
1 Corinthians we read the first historical record of communion.  Paul
had planted the church in Corinth but had been away for a few years.
In the first century CE the communion meal was a full common meal
(think potluck) during which the last supper was remembered.
Apparently in the time after Paul left things had gone off kilter a
bit.  According to Marcus Borg:

the
wealthy (who didn’t have to work) would gather early for the meal.
By the time the people who worked (most of the community) got to the
meal, the wealthy had already eaten and some were tipsy.  They may
also have served the best food and the best wine to themselves before
the others arrived.  Such was common among the wealthy of the world.
For Paul this violated the ‘one body’ understanding of the body of
Christ.  It meant bringing hierarchical distinctions of ‘this world’
into the body of Christ.1

Borg
goes on to explain the later threat to those who eat and drink and an
“unworthy manner”.  “In this context, eating and drinking the
bread and wine ‘in an unworthy manner’ refers to the behavior of the
wealthy in perpetuating the divisions of ‘this world.’ In Christian
communities, these divisions were abolished.”2

How
quickly the early church struggled with the equality and equity of
God’s kindom!  How hard it is to let go of hierarchy and let love for
all be the way decisions are made.  How familiar that is.  Those of
us who are white have been trained in mostly subconscious ways that
we are at the top of a hierarchy, and when left to our own devices we
will re-create systems that put our needs at the top while telling
ourselves it is OK.  Like the wealthy Corinthians might have said,
“We told them it started at 4, but they don’t make it until 5:20.
Why should we have to wait when we TOLD THEM what time it started?”
Or when a white person takes their own shame, guilt, anger, or
aggression as a reason to violate, harm, or kill  people of color.
Or even in the tiny little micro-aggressions of every day, related to
who gets heard, who gets believed, who is expected to be soothing,
who is expected to sooth, and whose pain matters.

It
took Paul saying, “don’t violate God’s table like that” for it to
be heard.  But I’m guessing that the reason he knew it was happening
was because the impoverished members of the community had been saying
so for quite some time, and finally tried a new way of getting their
needs heard.  I am hearing from Asian and Asian American friends and
colleagues that violence against Asians and Asian Americans has been
a regular part of their lives in the United States all along, and has
been FAR worse for the past year +.  I am also hearing exhaustion and
horror that a white man used his own shame as motivation for mass
murder, mostly of Asian women.  

And
let me say, because it MUST BE SAID, that a person doing sex work
does not IN ANY WAY change their human value, nor make it permissible
to harm that person.  Indeed, most people who support themselves with
sex work are people who exist in the most vulnerable positions of our
society, and as such are worthy of the most care and support to
counterbalance the harm they’ve lived.

The
Children and Youth of the Church have been working this Lent to
support a Lenten project to respond to hunger. They have invited us
to collect one canned good or  nonperishables a week to donate to the
SICM food pantry.  We are invited to bring those gifts this coming
Saturday (March 27 for those watching this NOT on Sunday) at the
flower sale.  Those tangible gifts serve as a reminder of other
people’s tangible needs.  It is also possible to make a donation to
SICM through our website or by check, knowing that SICM can buy food
at the Regional Food Bank at a very discounted rate.

That
is to say, that as we prepare God’s Communion Table for ourselves
today, given Paul’s admonitions, it might be a good time to be sure
that as we receive God’s gifts of grace, life, and hope, we extend
the table as we are able.  Or, perhaps this is  time for gifts to
Patty’s place.  Patty’s Place is an outreach-based service for women
at-risk, exploited, or involved in sex work. They provide immediate
resources and long-term referrals.

I’m
less than sure we’re embodying Jeremiah’s new covenant, but I am
entirely sure that the part that says that God is with us, in our
hearts, and claiming us as beloveds is true.  And I’m sure that we
have wonderful ways to respond to God’s love – with love, even,
ESPECIALLY in the midst of disaster.  Let’s do it!  Amen

1Marcus
J Borg,  59 Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order
the Books Were Written (United
States of America: HarperOne, 2012), 59.

2Ibid.

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

March 21, 20201

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