“Consolation” based on Isaiah 61:10-62:3 and Luke 2:22-40

December 27, 2020
by Sara Baron

A
month ago, the words to the hymn “Come Ye Disconsolate” jumped
off the page at me. It isn’t a hymn well known to me, until that
point I’d picked it once in 14 years, but it fit the moment too well
to ignore:

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er
ye languish;
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here
bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish.
Earth has no
sorrow that heaven cannot heal.¹

Disconsolate
means “without consolation or comfort.”²
I checked to be sure I had that right.

Perhaps,
then, it is not surprising what I heard and noticed in today’s Gospel
lesson that had never pulled my attention before. Parker read verse
25, “ Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this
man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of
Israel,…” and I thought “consolation!? I never noticed that
before” Followed by, “what does that really mean?” I figured
it meant …. something to do with the Messiah.

The
New Interpreter’s Bible says, “The ‘consolation of Israel’ was a
term for the restoration of the people and the fulfillment of God’s
redemptive work. … The term comes from references in Isaiah:

Comfort, O comfort my people
says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem (Isaiah 40:1-2 NRVS
cf. 49:13)

For the Lord will comfort
Zion (Isaiah 51:3 NRSV)

Break forth together into
singing, you ruins of Jerusalem;

for the LORD has comforted
his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem (Isaiah 52:9 NRSV, cf
66:10-13)”³

Right.
So this was about the Messiah, who for the Jewish people was the one
would bring the fulfillment of God’s promises of restoration.

How
interesting it is that it is called the “consolation” and focuses
on comfort! Simeon is a man introduced as waiting for God to act to
bring comfort, and trusting that God would. Then, when he sees the
baby Jesus, he sees this as the fulfillment of the promise that he
would see God’s Messiah. The story also says that a holy prophet,
Anna, saw and understood who Jesus was.

Jesus
as comforter, Jesus as consolation. That is both a familiar and
unfamiliar idea to me. I grew up with it, but that version was
very… milquetoast. Jesus was presented as available to me to make
me feel better when I was sad, to listen to me, to be my friend.
And, I think all of that is true. But as I’ve grown, I’ve become
equally interested in the idea that God wants good things for
EVERYONE, and in order to make that possible, I need to participate
in building a just society. God doesn’t just LISTEN, God wants to
help, and we are God’s hands and feet in the world.

The
expectations for the Messiah at the time of Jesus were for a king /
prophet / general who would restore the nation of Israel to political
and military prominence. As you may have noticed, Jesus didn’t do
that, but as Christians we tend to claim that what he did do was
better!

I’ve
been told many times that my job is to comfort the afflicted and
afflict the comforted, which interestingly was originally said about
the role of journalists. This year, I think we’re all the
afflicted, so my attention has been largely on comfort.

This
week I read a wonderful article entitled, “Jesus wasn’t born in a
stable and that makes all the difference.”⁴
I bet you can deduce the point from the title 😉 The author makes a
substantive argument that the word “inn” is mistranslated in Luke
2:7(b) “She wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in the
manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” A better
word would be “spare room.” As in “she was out in the main
family room with the family and the livestock because the spare room
was already overflowing.” Jewish peasants at the time kept animals
with them in their homes. And throughout the Middle East it would be
UNTHINKABLE not to stay with family if you have family.

The
author’s primary point is that when we think of Jesus being born out
in a stable, his family rejected by everyone, alone and distanced
from everyone. That is, we tend to think of Jesus being born
APART. Luke’s actual story puts Jesus in the middle of a small
house filled with a lot of family, so stuffed that the only
reasonable place left to put the baby down was in the
dug-into-the-ground animal feeding troughs. (A place he wouldn’t
roll away.)

The
“spare room” translation makes it clear that Jesus was part of
the Jewish peasantry. So does the detail in today’s reading about
giving a sacrifice, and the fact that what was given was the poor
person’s gift, for those who couldn’t afford the more expensive “a
whole lamb” option.

Remembering
that Jesus was born into a devout, poor, Jewish family helps me
understand his role as comforter. There is an understanding of pain
and a yearning for justice that fits having grown up both poor and
devout.

I
do think that old quote is true, of journalists, of preachers, and
even of Jesus himself. Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the
comfortable. And, dear ones, most of us are both. And, more than at
most points in our lives, we’re the afflicted. So, may you make
space in your being to accept the comfort and love of God. “Earth
has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” NOT EVEN 2020.

And
that’s some good Christmas news.

Amen

1United
Methodist Hymnal #510

2Summarized
from Apple Dictionary

3
R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s
Bible Vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994): 70.

4 https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-wasnt-born-in-a-stable-and-that-makes-all-the-difference/

Uncategorized

“Magnificent Magnificat” based on Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and Luke…

December 13, 2020
by Sara Baron

Years
ago, I read the book, “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David
Graeber which probably sounds incredibly boring and yet was one of
the most mind-boggling books I’ve ever read. It took me a year to
read it because the ideas contained in it required me to readjust my
thinking on many things I thought I knew (including money, the
military, violence, poverty, government, theology, and religion)¹.
In the final chapter, when I thought my assumptions were safe,
Graeber quotes Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech;

In
a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the
architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the
Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence,
they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as
well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights”
of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is
obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note,
insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring
this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad
check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”²

Graeber
builds on this, speaking particularly of the West after WW II:

To
put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic
countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a
deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally
changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep
their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions,
vacations, health care…), expanding public education institutions,
knowing that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the
working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit
guarantee that increases in workers’ production would be met by
increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s.³

I’d
marked that whole section with an exclamation point, as it had never
occurred to me. Then I turned the page. Graeber continues, speaking
of this deal, “… it was offered only to a relatively small slice
of the world’s population. As time went on, more and more people
wanted in on the deal.” That is, minority groups, nations not in
the North Atlantic, women, etc. He says, “At some point in the
‘70s things reached a breaking point. It would appear that
capitalism, as a system, simply cannot extend such a deal to
everyone. … The result might be termed a crisis of inclusion.”⁴

This
particular point has stayed with me so strongly that I knew which
side of the page the to scan in the final chapter to find it! And, I
thought of it again this week, when I read an opinion article in the
New York Times entitled, “The Resentment Never Sleeps” by Thomas
B. Edsall, which
wasn’t at all about what I expected. It was about social status, who
has it, who seeks it, who is losing it, and how that impacts
politics.⁵
This struck me as particularly meaningful for two reasons, in
addition to how well it fits with MLK and Graeber’s explanation of a
“deal.” First, because one of the most useful commentaries on
the Gospels I have (Social Science Commentary on the Synpotic
Gospels) is always talking about how the world order in Jesus’ day
was defined by the gain and loss of honor and shame, which were a
zero-sum game. Secondly, because the Bible, the Jesus movement, and
the Magnificat itself are ABOUT upending assumptions about social
status.

I
request your patience as I outline the primary points of the article,
because I think it will help us understand the meaning of Magnificat
for us today. Edsall starts by saying, “More and more, politics
determine which groups are favored and which are denigrated,” then
suggests that the major political parties are working at odds with
each other, one to enhance the status of historically marginalized
groups, the other to enhance the status of the white, Christian
working and middle class. (I’ll go ahead and leave it to the reader
to determine which is which.)

Edsall
then quotes two government professors who said, “social status is
one of the most important motivators of human behavior.”⁶
Now, I’m not sure why this is a major breakthrough in theoretical
thought, but apparently it is. It feels clear, both because social
status is valuable in and of itself and
because social status impacts every part of life, including access to
the things that promote life and access to resources.

Anyway,
the point is that people fight for social status. Which is to say,
people fight for a place on the HIERARCHY, for ranking. And how the
hierarchy is build impacts where people land on it, so it is a fight
many people are willing to engage in, with a lot of passion, whether
or not they’re conscious of what they’re fighting for.

Into
this reality, we people of faith hear the words of the prophet
Isaiah,

The
spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me;
[God] has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to
the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day
of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for
those who mourn in Zion– to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead
of a faint spirit. (Isaiah 61:1-3a)

If
the oppressed,the broken (hearted), the captives, the prisoners, and
the mourners are getting good news, then those at the bottom are
being picked up. That is, the Spirit of God is at work to pick up
the people at the bottom of hierarchy, one might even say, to
eliminate the bottom!!

From
the prophetic calls for justice, to the Torah’s dream of a just
society; from the aching of the Psalmists to be dealt with fairly, to
the responses of Jesus to the oppressed; the Bible shows us that God
is NOT in support of hierarchies.

That’s
how radical this faith thing is.

God
and faith aren’t about MODIFYING hierarchies, or fixing who is where
on them. God and faith are about ELIMINATING hierarchies, and
reiterating time and time again that EVERY SINGLE PERSON is a beloved
child of God, of inherent worth simply because they exist.

As
a Christian who has spent a lot of time with the Gospels, I am most
clearly able to see this in the life and ministry of Jesus, and I
think Luke does a singularly amazing job of foreshadowing the
entirety of Jesus with the words coming out of Mary’s mouth in the
Magnificat.

Mary
herself is lowly by social standing. She is female, she is young,
and she is poor. Her words start by acknowledging this, and naming
that God is the one who calls HER anyway, God is the one who favors
HER, and thereby ignores the normal world order. She then extends
this single act of lifting her up out of the hierarchy to a reminder
of who God is and how God is in the world. She says God scatters the
proud, brings down the powerful, and lifts up the lowly.

That
is, God flattens hierarchies. God eliminates social standing. God
fills up the hungry, but gives no more to those who have enough.
God… equalizes.

Because,
each and every person is a beloved child of God.

That
is, social standing is a thing of the WORLD, but not a thing of God.
Hierarchies do not serve God’s purpose in the world, they are the
antithesis of the kindom God is building (hopefully with our help).

So
what do we do with that? The obvious piece is that we work for
policies that benefit everyone, and not just the few. The challenge
piece is that we may end up needing to work for a restructuring of
our whole society as well as our church, because the hierarchies are
so deeply entrenched. But the immediate piece is to think about
hierarchies of power in society, and where we fit on each: age,
wealth, race, ethnicity, ability, gender, sexuality, education,
language, health, and immigration status might be places to start.
In which parts of our life are we seen as more value-able than
average, and in which less? And how does it feel to have God shake
that up and reject it? It may be that in places we are higher in the
hierarchy, we’re less comfortable with the hierarchy being rejected –
that seems pretty normal. It may be in that places we are lower in
the hierarchy, we’re relieved at the hierarchy being rejected –
that seems pretty normal too.

In
the moments when I have attempted to connect with God and understand
how God sees me, I have been flooded with compassion and grace. The
ways I judge myself and find myself lacking are not shared by God.
The inverse is true too, but that hasn’t felt nearly as emotionally
relevant.

That’s
the weird thing. Because we live in a society run by hierarchies,
just like Jesus did, we’re socialized to judge ourselves and others
ALL THE TIME and to FIGHT to be worthy. But that’s not how it is
with God. We ARE worthy because we are God’s, and the worth is
inherent, and doesn’t require us to do anything to earn it or keep
it. That also means we don’t have to worry about judgement, because
our worth CANNOT go away when it comes from God. (Instead, Biblical
“judgement” is about creating justice, which is about caring for
all of God’s people no matter where they are on the world’s
hierarchies.) Furthermore, God’s “economy” is one of ABUNDANCE
not scarcity, so we don’t have to fight for basic resources if we do
things God’s way.

Mary’s
song, like Isaiah’s prophecy, is good news for everyone. Hierarchies
are like hamster wheels that keep us fighting with each other to
prove our worth, in hopes we’ll have enough. The earth is abundant,
like God’s love. There is enough.

When
we participate in the Jesus movement, when we work toward the kindom,
we are building the world that God envisions, without hierarchy and
with PLENTY for all.

Your
job, for now, is to savor God’s inherent love for you, and allow that
love to help you shake off the world’s judgements of your worth.

As
we do that, we enable the kindom building that God requests of us
all. May God help us. Amen

1For
some reason, “This book is so heavy it took me a year to read”
has never been a great selling point to get others to read it.
Which I regret, because it drew back the curtain on so many of my
unexamined assumptions, and I think I’m a better person for it.

2Because
I was too lazy to type this from the book, I grabbed it from:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

3David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 373

4Graeber,
374-5.

5Thomas
B. Endsall, “The Resentment That Never Sleeps” published in the
New York Times Dec. 9, 2020. Found at
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/opinion/trump-social-status-resentment.html
on Dec. 9, 2020.

6“Hypotheses
on Status Competition,” William
C. Wohlforth and David
C. Kang

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

December 13, 2020

Uncategorized

“The Only Way Home is through the Wilderness” based…

December 6, 2020
by Sara Baron

Does the present moment feel like Exile
to you?

I mean, does it feel like there has
been utter destruction of life as we know it, and that we are living
in a holding pattern waiting and hoping for change and a return to
“normal” knowing it will still be different?

It seems to me that this metaphor holds
water.

It was into the experience of Exile
that the prophet Isaiah spoke saying, “Comfort, O comfort my
people, says your God.” This seems important. The comfort didn’t
come when things were relatively OK, nor when things were getting
worse. Really, it was spoken into the darkest of days, when hope was
lost, and the people might have simply given up.

I’m telling you. Advent is ON POINT
this year.

Into the hopelessness, when the Exile
felt heaviest, God spoke, “Comfort, O Comfort my people. Speak
tenderly to my people.” Indeed. God speaks into this moment with
comfort, and hope.

Given the incredible efficacy of the
vaccine trials, I’m hearing that if everything goes right, the
earliest we could return to “life as normal” is May. On one hand
that feels really great. There is light at the end of the tunnel!
On the other hand, May isn’t exactly right around the corner, and
we’re already 9 months into this thing, and May is BEST CASE
SCENARIO, and I think we’ve all gotten good at being hesitant to
believe that best case scenarios are exactly how things will go.

Furthermore, Thanksgiving hit JUST
as we were otherwise about to bring this latest crest of COVID cases
around, and the next few months are terrifying. Today, I know more
people who are sick with COVID than I have at any other point in the
past 9 months. The worry for the world in general is even heavier
when I add the worry for people I know in particular.

And, of course, it gets dark SO EARLY.

Whenever I read this Isaiah passage I
think that, if not for these words of comfort and hope, the people
might have broken, and the return might not have been possible.
These are the words that remind the people who they are, whose they
are, and what their job is.

The problem for the Exiles, as well as
for us, is that the way home is through the wilderness. Biblically,
wilderness and desert mean the same thing: a place that life only
continues to exist by the grace of God. The problem is that the
Exiles had been force marched across the desert to get to Babylon,
and the way home required crossing the desert again.

Feel familiar? To get to May (let’s
hope it is May) requires a lot more of the same pains we’re now
familiar with. There is no way home except… through.

The prophet Isaiah sees this, and
promises God will ease the journey as much as possible – making it
level and safe, even, and easy to walk. But, friends, they still
have to go through the desert to get home. For the Exiles, it was
650 miles. For us…. well, that sounds about right 😉

To the exiles, the prophet says that it
is not necessary to depend on themselves. God is with them. God is
their shepherd, God is their protector, it is God who is steady and
steadfast, and God can be counted on.

EVEN in Exile, even in the midst of
death and destruction.

At this point in this pandemic, that’s
exactly what I needed to be reminded of:

The world is not on my shoulders

Christianity is not on my shoulders

The UMC is not on my shoulders,

and even though I bear much
responsibility for the well-being of FUMC Schenectady,

that too is on God’s shoulders.

The path “home” IS through the
desert, and it will be inherently difficult.

But God is with us, and God is easing
our way as much as it can be eased.

The other side of Exile will be
difficult as well (it took GENERATIONS to rebuild the first time),
but God is going to be with us then too.

In the midst of this experience of
powerlessness, it is such a relief to remember that God is still
powerful. And God is still working. And God is still
Love-Alive-in-the-World.

(It doesn’t make everything better,
nothing does, but it helps.)

It is into this metaphor of making a
straight highway in the desert for the Exiles to come home, that Mark
places the beginning of the Jesus story. Because the people of Jesus
day were living an existence much like the Exiles, except at home.
They were exiles in their own land.

And the Gospel writer says, that John
was working with God to prepare those “highways home” so that
Jesus could lead the people down them.

I sure hope that we’re like John.
Working with God to prepare the highways home. I think we are. And
I KNOW that God is working with us, and doing most of the heavy
lifting too.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

December 6, 2020

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

Uncategorized

“God, Hope, and Fear” based on Isaiah 64:1-9 and…

November 29, 2020
by Sara Baron

“But in those days, after that
suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in
the heavens will be shaken.” Is it fair to say, CHECK? I mean,
these things haven’t literally happened, but it feels like it is
close enough. The world has we know it has been through at least as
much upheaval as the moon losing it’s reflective qualities.

It also sounds like grief to me, the
darkness and heaviness of grief, when even if the sun shines, it
doesn’t matter, because the heavy cloud of loss serves as a thick fog
that doesn’t let the sunlight in.

And most people are grieving right now,
to greater or lesser extents.

This year (probably for the first
time), I’m glad that Advent Scriptures are apocalyptic. Usually I’m
annoyed by that. But this year, they… fit.

“The sun will be darkened, the moon
will not give light, the stars will stop shining.”

Yes, fine, that happened. Now what?

Well, the writer of Mark says that when
that happens, Jesus will show up. It probably helps to remember that
the early Christians expected end times during their lifetimes, and
that the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by Rome in 70 CE
seemed like the beginning of the end. The Gospel of Mark was written
pretty soon after that.

So it seems like the Gospel writer is
suggesting, “these terrible times are just a sign of the good
things God is about to be up to.”

Can I admit something?

That sounds terribly naive!

(I feel like I just lost pastor points
in some tally somewhere.)

Except….

My life has been about paying attention
to the Divine, both in the stories of the Bible and in the stories of
people’s lives, and as much as I hate to admit it, the Gospel writer
isn’t wrong. When things are looking particularly bleak, and when
everything is shaken up, God is still there – and God is
EXCEPTIONALLY good at breaking into moments like that with grace and
wonder. (Perhaps the reason a Hail Mary pass is called that…)

Or perhaps, it is just that when
everything else is chaos, there are less barriers to God doing God’s
thing, because it is people’s control that keeps God away.

Now, I believe that people have failed
to contain this pandemic, and people have made choices not to protect
the vulnerable from the devastating economic impacts in individual
and family lives. Much of this has been done by government, and
institutions. It has NOT been God’s will that so many got ill, so
many have died, nor that so many have been harmed by the side effects
of the pandemic (which, as with medicine, can be deadly serious.)

Yet, I believe that God is at work to
bring as much good out of all of this as possible. Because that’s
just how God is.

And I think our work is to try to help
God along the way, mostly by not letting people put up barriers to
God’s work.

Of course, it can be hard to tell
exactly what God is up to, and it can be REALLY hard to find the
difference between our agenda’s and God’s agenda, but as a general
rule, God’s agenda has to do with bringing full and abundant life to
all people, or any step in that direction that doesn’t do more harm
than good.

The pessimistic part of me is afraid
that the pandemic is going to be used to make profit for the already
wealthy, to consolidate power among those who have it, and to reverse
any progress made for vulnerable populations. As supporting evidence
I offer: the stock market, and women dropping out of the labor
force. I’m stopping there before I get angry all over again at the
injustices.

And, indeed, human beings are an easily
terrified lot, with existential anxiety, and a tendency towards
tribal thinking that results in short term and feel good actions
rather than long term and global problem solving. We can be our own
worst enemies, and no matter how much someone has (in wealth or
power), basic human fear often tell them it isn’t enough, and they
keep trying to get more.

So, God’s agenda isn’t going to get
implemented automatically. There are real impediments to it, even
though God’s agenda is the best one out there.

Now more than ever, it can be easy to
feel small and helpless in the face of the problems of the world.
However, we each have our own power, and we have a connection to the
God-of-All who takes our power and effort and might and combines it
with others to make the best use of what we offer.

So, in these early days of Advent, I
invite you to do what you can to advance God’s agenda, and my
suggestion in this case is: do what you can to let go of your own
fear.

(NOTE: this doesn’t mean stop being
SAFE, they’re different)

Letting go of fear probably means
acknowledging it, naming it, listening to it, possibly even playing
out a lot of worse case scenarios. You may want to share about this
with someone you trust, it will help even more. It may be worth
examining fears, as they often contain fears themselves, stacked like
nesting dolls. The really great part about this is that by the time
you examine all the way down, the fear at the core is quite small and
can be managable!

At the end of this process, reminding
yourself that even in those worst case scenarios you are loved by God
and by other people, you are worthy, you are cared about, and you are
not alone. None of us can be alone, because God is with us, and God
carries the love of others to us.

It may feel small, but letting go of
our fears is a way to let God live more fully in us. And it makes
the world a little bit less fearful and a little bit more …
vibrant.

And that is a lot like lighting a
candle in the darkness. It makes a big difference.

So, dear ones, face a fear this week,
and let it’s power diminish. In doing so, you participate in
building the kindom. 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

Uncategorized

“Giving Thanks – 2020 Style” based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18…

November 22, 2020
by Sara Baron

Growing
up, we had big Thanksgivings. It was the holiday set aside for my
mother’s side of the family, and she is one of 5 siblings who have a
combined 11 offspring. The holiday moved around between their
houses, with 20-30 of us gathered however we would fit. There was
definitely a kid’s table, and I was always at it. It was loud,
chaotic, and intense. As a child that meant a lot of play, a lot of
playmates, and a lot of fun. I’m told there were also a lot of
dishes. Because it was the only time we got together, there were
Christmas presents too, and because it was the only time we got
together, there was plenty of family drama too.

I loved
those big Thanksgivings.

My
first year of seminary, in California, I decided not to fly home for
the short break. Instead a dear friend from college – also from
the northeast, also living in California, came down to be with me.
The two of us stayed in pajamas all day, read for pleasure, and ate
what we wanted when we wanted to. There was no turkey, because she
was vegetarian. I was happy to cook. She was happy to clean up. We
grazed on pies, side dishes, laughter, and books all day.

That
was the day I learned that holidays don’t have to be stressful.

This
year, a lot fewer people are going to have the big, loud, messy
Thanksgivings. I hope this year more people will have surprisingly
lovely small, quiet, unstressful ones.

However,
I know there is a lot of real grief in being separated from those we
love. This has already been a difficult year, and coming into the
holiday season, it is especially difficult. When we stopped having
in person worship in March, I wasn’t able to REALLY believe we’d have
to do Easter from our homes. You may remember that we decided to
“just wait until we could be in person” to do the Easter
photoshow. (Submissions are still being received on that basis.)

As time
went on, I became aware we weren’t going to get back together before
I went out on Family Leave, and started to hope to be together for
Homecoming.

Now it
is November, we aren’t having worship in person again in 2020, and
people are figuring out how to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
New Years over zoom. Christmas worship planning involves a lot of
pre-recording. The church’s advent wreath is staying upstairs this
year, while the amazing Altar Guild made us at home ones so we can
wait in hope together … but apart.

Now it
is Thanksgiving week and giving thanks has gotten a lot more
complicated than we’d like.

I’m not
sure we identify with the leper who gave thanks nor the lepers who
don’t. As a society at least, I think we feel like the lepers who
weren’t healed, the ones not in the story, the ones who didn’t happen
to meet Jesus that day.

Or, in
the metaphor of the Hebrew Bible Lesson, it doesn’t feel like we are
living in the goodness of the Promised Land. Perhaps it feels like
we’re still wandering in the desert, perhaps like we’re still living
in oppression in Egypt. Maybe like we lost the promise and are in
exile.

The
opening words of Psalm 137 may meet us in this moment:

By the
rivers of Babylon—
   there we sat down and there
we wept
   when we remembered Zion.
On the
willows there
   we hung up our harps.
For
there our captors
   asked us for songs,
and our
tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
   ‘Sing us
one of the songs of Zion!’

How
could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign
land?

How can we sing praises
when things are so HARD?

How can we celebrate
Thanksgiving when fear, death, and destruction surround us?

Sure, we can participate in
Advent, and name how much we NEED God, and how much we are WAITING
for things to be better.

But, how can we celebrate
God’s breaking-into-the-world (Christmas) when we are still in the
yearning?

And, dear ones, if you are
overwhelmed, sad, grieving, weary, lonesome, annoyed, or exhausted, I
don’t think you are over-reacting. Things are HARD, and there is no
end in sight.

By the rivers of Babylon
(which, it is clear, are the WRONG Rivers, they are not the River
Jordan), there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered.

These words may be a model
for us. It is OK to sit in grief and remember what was. It is OK to
be horrified by what is. It is OK to not like any of this, at all,
and be angry to be stuck in it. It is OK, even to be sad that “at
least the exiles got to cry TOGETHER, we have to cry apart.”

That’s fair.

It cheapens gratitude to be
forced into it, and it cheapens gratitude to come to it without also
naming the things that are broken and hard and awful. It cheapens
gratitude to tell ourselves that others have it worse, so we don’t
get to be sad or mad. It isn’t a competition. The pandemic is
allowed to be hard for everyone.

So, this is my proposal, my
suggestion, my “means of grace for this week.” I invite you to
take an HOUR to sit down with your accumulated grief from this year.
You may want to write it out as a long list, you may want to journal
it, you may want to draw it, or paint it, or play it on the piano,
walk it out, or just sit with it. Do this on or by Wednesday. If
you can’t get an hour, take 6 minutes. If you complete and hour and
you aren’t done, give yourself more time.

But, BE WITH your grief.
Let it live and breath and exist. I know for some of us, it is scary
and it feels like we will break if you even start to let it out, but
you won’t. You are stronger than you think and you are held up by
the God of Love. (How else would you have made it this far?)

Then, and only then, I
invite you to spend some time on Thanksgiving reflecting on what you
are grateful for. Ideally, I’d say give this an hour as well, but
maybe only 6 minutes can be found, and maybe it will take all day.
Don’t skip this part though. Some of the things we are grateful for
are sly – and if we don’t look for them, we might miss them. This
process won’t work unless you can name your grief, but it also won’t
work if you ONLY name your grief.

I know and trust that God
is with us, that God is doing amazing things, that God is at work to
make things better. But I don’t believe in cheap grace. We can’t
pretend the hard away, and we can’t keep pushing through it. We may
be a resurrection people, but that requires acknowledging the things
of death first.

THEN we get to notice the
amazing power of life.

So, I wish you a wonderful,
if unusual Thanksgiving. And, because of that I wish you an hour to
grieve and an hour to be grateful. May you feel God’s presence in
both times of prayerful reflection. 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

Uncategorized

“Compassion” based on Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25:31-46

November 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Hello
dear ones.

While
I desperately miss the chance to be present with you in worship and
embodied conversation, I am so grateful for this chance to speak and
for your willingness to listen. I hope that the Divine Spirit will
bless this message both in my speaking and in your hearing so that
space may be made for compassion and grace to grow in you and in me.

I
am speaking to you after a break! For this first time in 2020, I
took a FULL week of vacation! (Thanks to all whose work made that
possible) Despite my own admonitions about refreshing the news, it
wasn’t the MOST relaxing vacation I’ve ever had. Then, I spent 3
days on retreat. Well, virtual retreat, but retreat none-the-less
(thanks to all who made THAT possible too.) The retreat is a series
aimed at clergy, and focused on deep listening. By making space to
listen to each other space to be heard, we trust that the Spirit will
be able to be seen more clearly.

After
the retreat I am feeling refreshed, renewed, and grateful. And…
almost strong enough to tackle this Gospel lesson 😉

This
gospel lesson gets my heckles up, because I don’t like talk of hell,
I don’t like threats presented as God’s, and I don’t like binary
splits between people as if some are good and some are bad when we’re
all just complicated.

And
yet, I do like the means by which the judgement is made –
the care of the vulnerable. Which means my whole relationship with
this text is complicated. In the “Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels” Bruce Malina and Richard Rorhbaugh say, “The
basis for the division here is a person’s compassionate action toward
the weak and the poor. Its condemnation of the refusal of those able
to help people who are in need is nearly complete.”¹

God
calls us to compassion for those who disempowered: the hungry, the
thirsty, the stranger (or foreigner), the naked, the sick, the
imprisoned. Those are according to Matthew. Ezekiel mentions the
lost, the injured, those who have strayed, and the weak. In Ezekiel,
God will care directly for the sheep so that the lean are able to
become healthy, and the strong and fat are no longer able to oppress.

This
all reminds me of mercy – that word that gets used for God so often
it isn’t even heard anymore. Mercy is “compassion
or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to
punish or harm.”²
Similarly, the compassion being asked for in these texts is not
generic compassion. Rather it is compassionate ACTION towards those
who need it most.

It
is good to be kind and compassionate towards one’s peers, or those
with more power and influence than one has, but the judgement named
here isn’t on that. It is about compassion to those who have LESS
power and influence, and more need. (Although, intersectional
justice reminds us that power, influence, privilege and need are
complicated and multifaceted.)

As
I think these admonitions to be compassionate towards those who have
been disempowered is CORE to the Bible as well as to God’s desires
for a just world, the question of how to build up our compassion
muscles becomes really key!

For
me, at least, compassion starts with God’s compassion. That is the
foundation for EVERYTHING. Rather than starting with judgement or at
attempt to be worthy, my faith starts with the grace, love, and
compassion of God that I can trust in. It changes how I see myself,
as well as how I see others. It helps me be more gentle with myself
as well as more humble. It challenges me to be better, but lets me
find peace with myself as I am.

To
keep on learning those lessons requires reconnecting with the Divine,
and the Divine’s compassionate gaze. Prayer, spiritual exercise, or
simply letting myself BE without trying to DO anything more than be
all let me soak in God’s compassion and let it transform me once
again.

The
second piece is related to the first. To become a more compassionate
person requires compassion WITH MYSELF. This is actually the hardest
of the three I think. This also starts with prayer, but also
requires self-examination, and feedback from others. This, I
suspect, is a lifelong journey.

The
third piece of building compassion is the one we usually jump right
to: compassion for others. However, I really think it develops
naturally and effortlessly once we work on connecting with our
Compassionate God and allowing self-compassion. It turns out that
most of the judgments we put on others and the world are really our
judgements on ourselves externalized.

The
world needs more compassionate people, because the world needs to
become more compassionate. The irony is that the way we get there is
so indirect! To transform the world first requires allowing God’s
compassion to continually transform us.

During
this time of pandemic, when everything is different from what we’ve
known, we still have the capacity to work on our compassion. And
based on everything I’ve seen, the world is in desperate need of it
AND God has it in abundance.

May
we become stronger in our compassion, through God’s. Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 25”

2Apple
Dictionary.

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

November 15, 2020

Uncategorized

All Saints Remembrance

October 31, 2020
by Sara Baron

(Due to echo, many couldn’t hear the remembrance this year. Words are here.)

May
God’s blessing be with us in the reading of these names and in the
continuation of their lives’ labor.

Names Read

We
Bless Your holy name, O God

for
all your servants who, having finished their course,

now
rest from their labors.

Give
us grace to follow the example of their

steadfastness
and faithfulness,

to
your honor and glory.

Amen

On this All Saints Day, we have read
the names of our church family, and beloveds of our church family who
have passed away in the past year.

This year it seems imperative to take
note of the at least 1,760,000 people worldwide who have died after
contracting COVID-19. This is a number beyond our comprehension, and
yet it is a number that likely reflects significant under counting.

Some of those who have died are
acquaintances, friends, and family.

Most of them are unknown to us.

They are people from around the world,
and from our own city.

Men, and women, and transgender people.

Old, and middle aged, and young.

Across all ethnicities and race, yet
always hitting the vulnerable in each society the hardest.

God’s beloveds, each and every one.

One million, seven hundred sixty
thousand people, at least.

How do we remember their lives?

How do we give thanks for the lives?

How do we learn from their lives?

Today, we pour grains of sand into a
bottle reflecting the deaths over the months of the past year.
Today, tomorrow, and for as long as necessary, we wear masks, we
socially distance, and we do what we can to prevent more deaths. We
honor those who have died by trying to prevent further death.

We do what we can.

And so, I invite you to join me in the
spirit of prayer.

(Sand is poured as words are spoken)

Holy God, for the lives of those who
died in December, we give you thanks. For the loss of their lives,
we name our sorrow.

Holy God, for the lives of those who
died in (each month is read), we give you thanks. For the loss of their lives, we
name our sorrow.

For all your saints, O Holy God, we
give you thanks. May we learn from their lives and from their
deaths, and may the memories of their lives inspire full living,
compassionate care, deep hope, and profound love in those who have
survived them. Amen

Uncategorized

“For All the Saints” based on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13…

October 31, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
year I’ve spent some time wondering what the saints who have gone on
before me would think of this year. In some cases I know the
answers. My “Nana,” my paternal grandmother, would have been
HORRIFIED by it all. She was always scared of getting sick, and she
was a major extrovert and isolation would have been her personal
hell. My maternal grandmother, who I called “Grandmom” would
have been soooo worried about essential workers and those who are
struggling without enough resources. I fear my grandfathers, both
veterans, would be horrified by the way the USA failed to lead during
this pandemic.

Especially
in the spring, when we knew even less, and isolation was new, the
echoes of my grandparents lives felt close at hand. Perhaps it was
the isolation itself that helped, they felt as close as anyone else
could get, and memories were extra important.

Paul,
in 1 Thessalonians says, “You remember our labor and toil, brothers
and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any
of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are
witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct
was toward you believers.” The toil was literally labor for money
so he didn’t have to ask others for support. However, the standard
of “pure, upright, and blameless” still feels really high. I
loved my grandparents and I loved many of the saints we celebrate
today, but none were PERFECT.

I
sort of like the insults leveled in Matthew, “the scribes and the
Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;
therefore, do whatever they teach
you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice
what they teach.” So their actions were bad, but their teachings
were good? While the intention was to undercut them, I feel like
that is a far more do-able standard!

However,
it really was pointing out the hypocrisy in “Jewish leadership”
in Jesus’ day, so I guess I don’t get to drop the bar.

Despite
how it sounds in Paul, I don’t think that we’re called to be perfect.
Even John Wesley, well known in Christian circles for believing that
people could reach perfection DURING THEIR LIFE-TIMES, defined
perfection as speaking and acting out of God’s love for everyone –
but acknowledged that one could ERR in how one expressed that love
and still be perfect.

Most
of us still don’t meet that standard.

Nor
do our saints. I knew many of them and loved them and was inspired
by them, but neither love nor inspiration required perfection.

I
do think that love and inspiration do best when they meet with
authenticity. I”m always struck by the in-congruence between the
human desire to “fit in” and the fact that when I meet with loved
ones to prepare a “celebration of life” that what the people love
and miss are the things that made the person UNIQUE. It is the ways
that we don’t fit into the norm that people love about us. (Although
humility can be nice too, as Paul AND Jesus point out.)

As
we come into this week of even higher anxiety and deeper unknowing, I
hope those saints who have been walking with us all year can help us
again. They have been through unknowing, and come out the other
side. They have walked with us in love throughout our lives and
their love stays with us today.

Whatever
comes next, God is with us. And those people who have been
expressions of God’s love in our lives remain sources of our
strength. It has been a very hard year, and it isn’t over yet, but
we DO NOT WALK ALONE. Amen

Uncategorized

“Love” based on Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 and Matthew 22:34-46

October 25, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’ll
admit it. I haven’t been thinking much about the long game. I’m
very much in the present and the near future… the time frame
between NOW and the “end” of the pandemic (whatever that means)
and maybe the first few weeks to months afterwards. Part of this is
the depth of unknowing – what will life look like “after”?
What does “after” mean? When will “after” come, and how?

But
also, I think I haven’t been thinking about the long game because the
present and the near future are overwhelming and I sort of forgot
that there IS a long game. That is, until I read the Psalm and it
felt like standing in a big field in the middle of no where watching
the stars come out at night. (I forgot about that too. There are
too many lights in the city, and travel is too hard with a pandemic
and a baby.)

The
Psalmist says to God, “For a thousand years in your sight are like
yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.” And it
is perspective, like seeing how SMALL we are in comparison to the
night sky, except in this case even better because the time warp
we’ve been in since March (or longer) is put in perspective too.

This
too shall pass.

It
is incomprehensibly bad, and incredibly hard, and not to be
trivialized.

But,
this too shall pass.

There
still IS a long game out there, and God is still playing it.

That
helps me breathe a little deeper.

God
is still working on the kin-dom, because God never stops working on
the kin-dom. Despite all the intersecting crises of this moment, God
keeps working towards a world of abundance, of fair distribution, of
love. And God WILL WIN, no matter the set back.

In
the midst of this remembering to breathe a little deeper and take
some of my fears for the moment and remember that God is playing a
long game, Jenna posted this image on Facebook of my very favorite
place on earth.

This
image also helps me feel the way the Psalm does, with “For a
thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or
like a watch in the night.” It puts my fears, as well as my
frustrations and my hopes, into context. There is so much beauty and
there is so much peace, EVEN NOW.

The
Gospel also serves as a much needed reminder speaking into these
difficult days. The teaching here isn’t unique to Jesus, or to
Christianity. Rather it is near universal in the world’s religions.
You may know the story of two great Rabbis, Shammai and Hillel in the
century before Jesus:

One famous account in the
Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to
Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated
that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the
entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot.
First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request,
threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to
Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

“What
is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole
Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!”¹

This
is the key to a life of faith then: Love.

Nothing
more or less.

Nothing
complicated.

Love.

Loving
God and neighbors. We can break it down, or expound on it, but in
the end it is just love. There is plenty of commentary on what it
means, which is good because it is more challenging than it sounds.

One
piece of commentary that has been most meaningful to me comes from
the Buddhist tradition. From Buddhism, have learned that
loving-kindness flows from compassion, and compassion HAS TO start
with yourself. Then it can flow to a loved one, and then loved ones,
and then known ones, and then unknown ones.

Because
most people I know, myself included, aren’t actually all that good at
self-compassion, THIS is my suggestion for you this week: once every
day find a way you can be more compassionate to yourself, that is to
treat yourself with loving-kindness.

As
this may seem strange, let me make it a bit more concrete:

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you are so lazy, there is so much
to do, get up and DO IT” self compassion may sound like, “Self,
you seem warn down. Clearly you need a few moments before anything
else is asked of you. What might make those moments more
refreshing?”

or…

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you were really mean to that
person you spoke to, you are a failure at basic human dignity.”
self-compassion may sound like, “Self, that went really poorly
didn’t it? I know I meant to do better, and I didn’t. Let’s look at
what went wrong, and see if we can find a turning point for next
time.”

or….

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, for pete’s sake, stop doom
scrolling! What is wrong with you, you know better!” self
compassion may sound like, “Self, it is a scary time and I know you
are looking for answers and hope. However, refreshing the news or
scrolling social media doesn’t have it, does it. It would be nice to
feel like there is more control in the world, but alas, my power is
only so big. What do I have control over that I could substitute?
Hydration? Taking a nap? Deep breathes? A walk? Let’s find
another way to respond to anxiety that helps more!”

That
sort of thing. This week, I hope you will do this once a day! And,
if you are superbly good at this (wow! Go you!) then you can try
having compassion for ONE other loved one a day too.

It
is funny, but loving our neighbors starts with loving ourselves. And
compassion for the world starts with letting God’s compassion reign
in our hearts.

So,
dear ones, go and love.

Amen

1 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

October 25, 2020

Uncategorized

“Breathe” based on Exodus 32:12-23 and Matthew 22:15-22

October 18, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today’s
gospel is one of those really deceptive ones. You think you know
what it means, and then you go to explain it, and it splits out of
your fingers.

The
Jesus seminar puts Jesus’s words, “Give therefore to the emperor
the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are
God’s” in red, indicating that they think this reflects an
authentic teaching of Jesus. In fact, it is one of the statement they
are most sure of, it ranks 7^th.¹

The
challenge for me is that I read the Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels this week (which I usually do), and it took issue
with how this text is usually understood.

“In
the twenty-first century, Europeans and Americans generally believe
there are four basic social institutions: kinship, economics,
politics, and religion. These are conceived as separate social
institutions, and people make arguments about keeping them separate.
However, in the world of the New Testament, people attended to only
two institutions as distinctive: kinship and politics. …

In
trying to understand the meaning of Jesus’ statement about rendering
to Cesar and God what belongs to each, therefore it would be
anachronistic to read back into the statement either the modern idea
of separation of church and state or the modern notion that economics
(including the tax system) somehow has a separate institutional
existence in a realm of its own. To assert here the frequent notion
that “two kingdoms” one political/economic and the other
religious, one belonging to Cesar and the other to God, are each
being given their due in the reply of Jesus is to confuse ancient
social patterns with our own.”²

Sooooo….
what does it mean?

I’m
not sure, but my best guess is that the clue comes in Jesus’s
question, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer when
it comes to the coin is “Caesars” What equivalently bears God’s
image?

Well,
our faith tradition says… we do. We are made in God’s image, the
latin is “imago dei” – image of God. The equivalent of the coin
is…. people.

This
is a fantastic answer. It is faith-filled, deep, and sidestepped the
trap they were trying to put Jesus into. Even better, it took a
while to sink in. You hear, “Give to God what is God’s, and you
have to think, ‘well, what is God’s?’” And that is a very useful
question. The coin suddenly seems a lot less important, when both
people and creation are God’s!

For
me, this is a primary identity. Who am I? I am a beloved child of
God, made in God’s image.

It
is also expansive. Who are you? You are a beloved child of God,
made in God’s image.

In
a symposium I did this week, Adam Foss shared about being a District
Attorney, and slowly awakening to the depths of injustice in the
justice system. As he woke up, he realized he needed to ask the
community he worked for what they needed, and he was surprised by
their answers. They told him that what they needed most from him was
“to be seen as humans” and “to be treated with dignity.”

This
has me thinking about how and when society dehumanizes people. There
are, unfortunately, A LOT of answers, but I’ve been wondering mostly
when society has convinced ME to dehumanize people. And, the answer
is sort of difficult to sit with.

Rather
than share my own list, I’m going to give you a moment to consider
yours.

Foss
also talked about the culture in the DA’s office, where if anyone
expressed discomfort (or any other emotion), they were told they were
“getting too close to the case.”

Maybe
that’s what really hit me. Because, if I’m honest, there is so much
pain visible to me, that I have to look away from some or numb myself
from some in order to function. But to do that FEELS like
dehumanizing the ones I look away from (perhaps it is.)

This
week I also came across a suggestion from Nanea Hoffman which said,
“Note to self: you don’t have to continuously monitor all the
disaster and heartbreak in the world. You are not in charge of
outrage and grief. Witness it. Feel the feelings. But remember,
love is where you live.”

And
with that, a deep breath came out.

It
is important to know where injustice is happening, where people are
being dehumanized, and in particular where people are struggling
close to home. BUT, not to know for knowledge sake. To know for
action’s sake – and studies say that the more we know the less
likely we are to act, likely because we get overwhelmed.

One
of the INTENTIONAL strategies of the past few years has been to
overwhelm us with despair. (It has worked far too well.)

But
we are not made in the image of Caesar We are made in the image of
God. We cannot solve all the problems in the world – at once. But
we CAN make significant differences in the world, and in the world
around us. The small actions we take every day matter, because we
are MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. We are God’s hands and feet and LOVE
in the world.

So,
what can you do to live in love this week? How can you let go of
despair? (Feel it but then let it go) How can you, like Moses, savor
the closeness of God? How can you connect with the humanity of
others?

A
suggestion, or two.

Take
deep breaths, stomach expanding breaths, often. Let them out with a
sigh.

It
helps. It may help even more if you remember that you are breathing
and breathing out the Divine.

And,
feel your feelings. Be with the despair, or the grief, or the joy,
or the anger, or the exhaustion. Even better, if you can trust
someone with them, name them. The more you accept your own humanity,
the better you will be able to accept the humanity of others.
Emotions are a reflection of souls.

And
that’s it, my friends. We are ALL made in the image of God. Thanks
be to God. Amen

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

2Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 397-8.

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