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Sermons

“All Messed Up” based on Acts 16:16-39

  • May 8, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

This story is all messed up. To begin with, Paul is a very questionable hero. He doesn’t seem to act in order to benefit the slave girl. In fact, the text says explicitly that he was “very much ANNOYED” by her and that’s why he healed her. Annoyance – not compassion, love, or concern for her well-being, annoyance.

Truth be told, the story doesn’t really seem to care about the slave girl either. The slave girl is not named, the text does not indicate that Paul ever spoke to HER directly, and it does not tell us what happens to her after she was “healed.” She’s a narrative means to an end.

The spirit in her is used to tell us that the followers of Jesus’s way were in fact slaves of the Most High God. Her status as a slave may exist primarily as a narrative device, whereby the enslaved is able to name the slave-to-God status of others. While it is suggested that her owner’s were angered by losing the money she had been making them, the accusations they made against Paul and Silas don’t even have anything to do with that.

Of the girl herself we know very little. She was a slave. She had a spirit of divination. It made her owners a lot of money. She followed around Paul and his company, and her truth-telling about them got annoying after a few days, so Paul ordered the spirt of out of and it came out. Then she wasn’t worth as much money.

Those aren’t terribly human facts to know about someone. We know nothing of her motivation, although her motivation could reasonably be assumed within the confines of the story, to be the spirit and not her! We don’t know what happens next for her. Is she beaten because she is now worthless? What back-breaking labor does she land in? How old is she anyway? What other work may she be used for now? What she grateful? Was the spirit something that benefitted her life or harmed it (go with the story on this one, we can’t change the story, so we might as well accept its premises for a moment).

Not only do we know nothing about her, we also don’t know why Paul failed to SEE her or have any mercy on her. If he had the power to take away the spirit, then maybe he could have done so earlier. On the other hand, having the spirit made her more valuable, which may have improved her life. But he doesn’t seem to CARE and neither does the story.

At best, this part of the passage might just be a retelling of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge.

[Jesus said,] ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 18:2-5)

Paul gets worn down by a spirit, and orders the spirit out of slave girl. Like the judge, he doesn’t act out of justice or obligation, he uses his power because he is ANNOYED.

Later, when he gets out of jail because of his inborn status as a Roman Citizen, he demands HIS rights as a Roman Citizen, and is upset that he was mistreated because HE deserves better because of his power in the world. Paul demands a public apology, but only for how he was treated. He doesn’t ask about her status, or indicate that she mattered.

In Acts, Peter is presented as “the new Jesus.” Paul isn’t. Thanks be to God. I don’t know what Peter would have done in this case, nor can I really speak to what Jesus would have done. Yet, I’d like to believe they would have SEEN the girl, and not just been annoyed by the spirit. I want to think they’d worry about her life too. Stories of Jesus seem to imply that lives matter, even the lives of people who have been beaten down by life.

In this story, Paul fails to do so.

And yet, he doesn’t. The second half of the story is different from the first half. The interaction with the jailer is amazing, beautiful, miraculous, and shows an INCREDIBLE amount of empathy for the very person who was oppressing them. Paul and Silas cared about the jailer, and the ways that they responded to the jailer saved his life and showed him a new way of being. The way that Paul responds to the jailer is exemplary. He SEES him and cares about him, without even knowing him. That feels like how Jesus would have handled it.

The story of the earthquake in jail, and the prisoners staying put is pretty darn weird. I suppose Paul knew that the authorities would figure things out sooner rather than later, so he wasn’t particularly concerned.  Yet in most cases in human history, the cycle of oppression wins out. One person or group oppresses another, and if the oppressed ever get a chance to lead, they respond with oppression as well. Prisoners taking gentle care of their jailers breaks the cycle of oppression. That being said, as a GENERAL rule, I don’t think this is a model we have to follow. It is a good thing to keep in mind when you already know you are SAFE, but not necessarily a good choice every time.

Paul’s actions in prison were very effective in proclaiming that the way of Jesus was different than the ways of the world. The jailer converted. Paul didn’t, however, call out the economic injustice, the inherent human dignity of the slave girl, or even the position of jailer in a system of oppression. Paul’s actions mostly left things the same, and didn’t lead people to fuss over them, other than worrying about if they’d get in trouble for misidentifying a Roman Citizen.

I think he could have done better. I think these stories are all messed up. That’s a relief! It indicates that sometimes the people of God mess up, and although we are doing our best, we fail to see the most loving way forward. Sometimes we don’t notice the calls for justice around us.  Sometimes we’re just plain wrong! Often we don’t SEE.

Yet, God continues to work through Paul through the rest of Paul’s life. The writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles has told some pretty important stories for the history of human kind. That is, the failure of Paul and the story to get it right isn’t the final answer. (Not that this helps the slave girl one little bit. Nothing does.)

Yet, it doesn’t stop here. Paul kept developing, and learning more deeply how to love. He would eventually write the famous words to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29) Paul would come to know that slaves have value and that women have value. Perhaps if he looked back on his life, he would have regretted how he acted on that one day, but it didn’t define his life.

We can make mistakes, and learn to do better later. It’s normal. It’s human. In fact, we can’t do otherwise! God is certainly capable of forgiving us, and that should lead us to believe that we can be capable of forgiving ourselves.

want to share God’s love and God’s light at General Conference, even with those with whom I disagree. I don’t want to compromise, and I WILL NOT compromise on the inherent dignity and worthiness of all of God’s people regardless of sexual preference or gender identity. (Obviously.) And yet, the people who stand in opposition to inclusion are not the enemy. They simply don’t know better – yet. Many of us in this room have struggled along the journey to get to inclusion. (Some of us who are younger, had open-minded parents, and attended great churches in our youth didn’t have to struggle, but that makes us much more lucky than wise.) If those of us in this room, who now so consistently act out of regard for the wholeness of your sisters and brothers who are LGBTQI, were once not so sure, then it is clear that God’s grace can win in the hearts of others as well.

No one’s mind will be changed by yelling though, nor by nastiness. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Love is the only way forward, especially in the face of hatred and fear. As I get ready to leave, I’m pondering how to make space for God’s love to flow through me to drive out hate. I wonder how I can serve as a light.

Now, as previously discussed, I am convinced that the time has come for acts of disobedience and non-violent direct action that will disrupt the normal system. I believe that The United Methodist Church acts as an oppressor doing harm to beloved children of God, and I believe (as I have believed throughout my life) that I am to be part of changing that. The question is how to keep my heart and mind peaceful, steady, and focused on love while I do so. People are going to say terrible things, and things are at times going to go terribly wrong.

But the people who say terrible things are misguided, not evil. The things that will go terribly wrong are not permanent. God is love, God is creator, God is powerful beyond measure. God’s will win out in the end – either through The United Methodist Church or The United Methodist Church will die so that God’s love can live. Nothing else is the final answer. Nothing else can be. God’s love always wins. That is, the Love of God will win out in the end, no matter how much human beings at the church at large mess it up right now.

Two of my favorite prayer practices interrelate. I’ve mentioned them before, but it is worth a reminder today. One prayer practice is to breath in love and breath out stress, fear, and anything that holds you back from love/God. That one is wonderfully de-stressing. The other is to breath in the pain of the world, and allow God to transform it within you, so that you can breath out love.

It is my intention to pray that prayer over and over again. It is my intention to try to live that prayer through the next two weeks. When you are able, I invite you to join me. When the pain becomes too much to bear it may help. (If it doesn’t, return immediately to the other one and soak up love until you can go forward again!) We are, all of us, called to be God’s love and God’s light in the world. We are to participate in co-creating the world with God. We are to use our power to bring in the kin-dom. We are able to participate in changing hate into love.

Let us breathe. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 8, 2016

Sermons

Untitled

  • May 1, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I often find myself giggling when Church groups are particularly unaware of the culture around them. Likely, I shouldn’t giggle, as my relationship to popular culture is essentially nonexistent, and I a lot miss more than I get. For instance, did you know that there are radio stations other than NPR? (Why?)

Given that I’m useless at popular culture, when I know something is funny it is likely a problem. One of my favorites was a restructuring proposal for The United Methodist Church in 2012 called “Plan B.” Apparently the mostly people who put it together hadn’t ever heard about emergency contraception, and missed that they were suggesting a church restructure that was named the same thing as what most people call “the morning after pill.” I don’t think that implied good things about their plan, either intentionally or unintentionally. I suspect this related to why much of the world finds church irrelevant.

My other favorite is that the Upper New York Annual Conference’s printed “publication” is called “Advocate.” Now, I know why they call it that. It is because of our Gospel reading today. But I find it amazing that they would choose to do so because, well, the famous paper called “The Advocate” is quite a bit different than the version including a letter from the Bishop and news about new faith communities. In their own words, “The Advocate” is “Gay news – commentary, arts & entertainment, health, parenting, and politics. The Advocate is the leading source for up-to-date and extensive LGBT news.”1

I titled this sermon “The Original Advocate” because I like that the Holy Spirit is called the Advocate in John. Although, to be fair, other translators use “Comforter” and scholars point out that the word also has connotations of “friend.” Nevertheless, I really like “Advocate” and the idea that God advocates for us and for justice in the world. The idea that the Holy Spirit serves as teacher and “reminder” for us in the midst of the confusion and disorientation life is truly comforting to me. God works with us, which means that full responsibility for the wellbeing of the world does not lie on any of us alone – and that is good news.

Truth be told, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this passage. The first time I remember doing “real” Bible Study was at camp the summer after my freshman year of high school. Before that, both at camp and in Sunday School, we’d done … well, I don’t really now what we did, but some combination of story telling, crafts, morality lessons, skits, and chats about God. But that year the directors at camp trusted us to do REAL Bible Study. We read from our actual Bibles. We had resources that helped explain concepts to us that were difficult to deduce on our own. We struggled and debated. We were permitted to really work on the texts themselves. Obviously, I was in love.

The study that summer was about “peace” and this was the culminating passage. We’d learned that peace in the Bible is more than peace in the world – about the idea of shalom and God’s desire for a world where all people have enough. We looked at texts throughout the Bible about peace, and then we got to this passage where Jesus assures the disciples that his peace is with them and cannot be taken away from them. The sense of wonder about being able to struggle with scripture has stayed with me ever since, and it has created a sense of shining joy every time I return to this passage, remembering the delight I had in it when I first met it. (Yes, I’m aware of just how nerdy this is.)

It was a special bonus this week when Matt Berryman, Executive Director of the Reconciling Ministry Network, wrote an article in The Advocate. It was published on Friday and is entitled, “Dear United Methodist Church, Do the Right Thing.” It starts with this, “In just a few weeks, the United Methodist Church will gather in Portland, Ore., for its general conference to determine church policy and practice for the next four years. ‘Who cares?’ you might be asking yourself. Whether you’re religious, spiritual, agnostic, or atheist, here’s why you should.”2 He concludes this thought a few paragraphs later saying,

“Becoming a welcoming, affirming faith would send a message to families of all kinds, to the larger communities where our churches are mainstays and influence the broader public discourse; where Christianity still exerts significant influence and power over people’s lives. And beyond the positive water cooler and kitchen table conversations, a reversal of the UMC’s discriminatory policy would begin to dismantle the widely held view that institutional religion is the biggest obstacle to our equality.”3

He’s right. Those are a good assessment of why what happens in Portland starting next week matters. Unfortunately, the right thing isn’t going to happen.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a training on Nonviolent Direct Actions, hosted by MIND (Methodists In New Directions). They are the Reconciling group in the New York Annual Conference, and this training was part of their preparation for General Conference. I was lucky enough to be invited and have it be on my way home! The trainer and participants were well aware that there are not enough votes to change the direction of The United Methodist Church – this time. (Frankly, so is Matt Berryman, it is just his job to push anyway.) The goals right now are to heighten tensions, create crises, and force leaders into decision dilemmas. Only by continuing to apply pressure to the church and grow the anxiety within it is there the opportunity to create change over the long run. We have to play a long game, and we need people willing to take some risk.

That is, things may not be overly “polite.” I spent time this week with a three year old whose parents are consistently teaching her to be polite. Her parents are my friends. She’s a sweet child, and she’s learning all the rules well. I’ve been wondering about it all though. Politeness is very important to know, and to practice. That is, until it isn’t.

Being polite is generally a good way to communicate respect to other people, and acknowledge their humanity. In that way it is a VERY good thing. However, in our society (like most others I think) politeness can become a constraint that limits the work of justice. It is not considered polite interrupt people, but in the midst of humor that is racist, the interruption is the lesser of two evils. It is impolite to talk with one’s mouth full, but if there is a danger that needs to be articulated, it is the lesser of two evils to do so anyway. This list of examples could be rather extensive, as polite is not as important as safe and just.

Some of the work that will be done at General Conference isn’t going to seem polite! The United Methodist Church currently functions as an oppressor of people who are lesbian, gay and bisexual, and the work of justice trumps the value of politeness. The trainer yesterday pointed out that direct actions happen when you are not seeking someone else to give you power – doing it yourself. She explained this as the difference between the people who petitions for the Confederate flag to be removed from the South Carolina statehouse and the woman who climbed up the pole and took it down.4 It is not considered POLITE to claim authority for yourself, to ignore the hierarchy and those who claim an institution’s power much less to disrespect their authority and wishes by doing exactly what they don’t like. Most of the time, that’s a good enough reason not to do something. The exception is when greater harm is done by being polite!

I’m glad my friend’s daughter knows how to say “please” and “thank you.” It will serve her well in life, and those she interacts with will feel acknowledged and respected by her words. However, I hope that when it is necessary she will stand up for herself (and others) however she has to – whether it is polite or not!

The Revelation passage that was read today is one person’s dream of what God’s reign might look like. There is a lot there, and I’m going to resist my urge to unpack all of it. Instead I want to focus on two things.

The first is that the gates are always open. The imagined city is insanely large (1500 miles cubed, think about THAT for a while), and it HAS gates (12 of them), but they are always open. They are ALWAYS OPEN. Anyone can come in at any time. Anyone can leave at any time. There is an implication that there are people who don’t live in the city, so this isn’t merely a redundancy. Anyone who wants to be in the presence of God can be. Anyone who wants to be “in” can be. Furthermore, anyone who wants to leave, can. The gates are open both ways, so no one is forced into a relationship they aren’t wanting.

Permanently opened gates. Everyone can come in, at all times. That’s quite the image, isn’t it?

The second piece of focus relates to the first, in the permanence of it all. The whole city is set up as if it will be forever, and that dream fits the experience of the people who just watched their Temple and city be destroyed AGAIN. They yearn for the un-destroyable. They yearn to be free of the oppression of an empire.

The problem for us here today is that we are citizens of today’s most powerful empire. Peter Storey, a Methodist Bishop of South Africa, once wrote,

“I have often suggested to American Christians that the only way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire… America’s preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or by Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage… You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them”.5

This is, sadly, true of both our country and our church. May the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, guide us to see our actions clearly and to be brave enough NOT to be polite when God and justice call for it. May the way of God’s shalom/peace be our way.

Amen


—–

1 If you Google “The Advocate” this is the mini description below it as of April 30, 2016. Aren’t you glad I footnoted that?

2 Matt Berrymore “Dear United Methodist Church, Do the Right Thing” published April 29, 2016http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/4/29/dear-united-methodist-church-do-right-thingaccessed April 30, 2016.

3 Ibid

4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/27/woman-takes-down-confederate-flag-in-front-of-south-carolina-statehouse/

5 Quoted by Joyce Hollyday in “Homiletical Perspective on Revelation 10; 21:22-22:5” found on page 491 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009). Worse yet, she was quoting someone else quoting him.

–

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

May 1, 2016

Sermons

“Rainbow Connection” based on Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:33-35

  • April 24, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

“Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?” “What’s so amazing that keeps us star-gazing, and what do you think we might see?”1 Or, in another voice (one that is not Kermit the Frog), “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living life in peace…” “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world…”2 Or, in another voice (one that isn’t John Lennon), “We will work with each other, we will work side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.”3

Or, in yet another voice, one attributed to God and one that likely formed the basis for the reading from Revelation today, from Isaiah 65:17-19

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.

The strange text of Revelation is generally obscure. It was written in code so that if it was found by the wrong people, it wouldn’t be understood. In this case the “wrong people” were those who wanted to destroy the early Christian community. The issue is that we don’t really have the code. However, the last two chapters break out of the clouds a little bit, and it becomes clear that the author is yet another dreamer. Granted, he hasn’t been writing about rainbows, nor star gazing, but by the end he writing about hope, faith, and love as convincingly as third Isaiah. (Which, in case you didn’t know, is as high of a compliment as I can give.)

Our brief passage today is jam packed with imagery. There is a new city, a new Jerusalem. Heaven and earth as we know them have “passed away” and this is the new creation. The sea is no more. That’s significant in two ways. First, in Hebrew lore, the sea was the epitome of chaos, and the fear that comes from it. Secondly, in the ancient world, the sea was what separated people from another. It is as if all the continents came back together again. So the lack of sea means there is nothing to fear and nothing that separates people from each other!

God chooses to live WITH the people. “The home of God is among mortals.”(21:3). That is, there is no separation between God and people either. And, within the vastness of the created universe, this dreamer proposes that there is no where God would rather be than among the people! With God’s presence, there is no death, there is no sadness, there is no pain. And when there is thirst, God’s one self quenches it.

This is really interesting imagery. It isn’t a image of heaven. It could be an image of heaven come to earth, that makes some sense, or they may be combined into one thing. It proposes a sanctity of life itself, of humanity, of earthiness and fleshiness and of cities! (As commentators point out, the Bibles starts in a garden but ends in a city – a really big city, as it turns out.) Much of Christianity has been other-worldly focused, but both the hope-texts in Isaiah and this hope-text part of Revelation suggest that God is at work creating the WORLD as God wants it to be, not just waiting around for us to die in order to give us abundant life.

That’s something that REALLY matters to me. I believe that God is at work in the world, still creating, still moving the world into what it can be, and is now working WITH us on that. I believe that the life of Jesus was part of that creative energy, and the work of his followers is to be attentive to co-creating the world as it can be with God. His message was that this work is POSSIBLE, and that it is NEAR, that we can reach it. I deeply believe that the purpose of life as a follower of Jesus is to help form the world into what it can be. This is one of the most important pieces of my faith.

Another of the most important pieces of my faith is that God loves each and every person AS WE ARE. We are already enough for God. I don’t deny human brokenness, nor the need for healing and change. I simply believe that it is not a barrier to God’s love, and that even in brokenness and sickness God still sees us as enough.  Because I believe God loves ALL of us, I believe how we treat each other matters in the deepest parts of the universe. When we hurt each other, we hurt God. When we exclude each other, we exclude God. When we fail to love each other – or ourselves – we limit our capacity to love God.

My biggest question coming into this sermon was “Why is this commandment to love each other called ‘new’?” You might even have noticed that I put this in the bulletin as my sermon title, but I’ve since gotten over that. My issue is that the commandant is very old. It is in the Torah. It is one of the foundations of the entire YHWH tradition. Every Jewish person ever has known it. Worse yet, this version is a bit tame! While the rest of the Gospels give some version of “love your neighbor as yourself” which reflect the original law, this text says simply to love each other. It is an insider commandment, which is (still difficult but…) way easier!!

I finally found an article by a Jesuit named Jack Mahoney on a website called “Thinking Faith” that did some justice to the question. Father Mahoney points out that, “One of the purposes for which the Gospel of John seems to have been was written was to attempt to resolve painful divisions which existed within the Johannine community (as we see in the First Letter of John). The evangelist therefore may have Jesus here exhorting all his future disciples to mediate his continuing love to one another after he has gone, and so maintain the unity he will pray for earnestly.” That is, this is a pretty practical suggestion! The love ONE ANOTHER bit is being said because they weren’t succeeding at it. It also suggests that the love we show is a partial expression of the holy love that exists for each person. That is, ‘John in his gospel and his letters (as their author or their source) writes so repeatedly of the need for mutual love and unity among the disciples of Jesus, that it seems likely that these virtues were notably lacking in John’s Church”.4So, it wasn’t “new” but it needed attention.

If we are meant to love each other – and our neighbors in all places – and if we are meant to co-create the world as it can be with God, that leads us to significant questions about HOW that work is best done. Within communities of faith, there are vast and abundant differences about what that means.

In particular, The United Methodist Church is a broad umbrella, and we have some striking differences of opinion about how God would like the world to look and what love looks like in the world. On May 10th our every-four-years international gathering, General Conference, starts. It is the only body that can speak for The United Methodist Church and make adaptations to our rules.

There is a fantastic Coalition called the Love Your Neighbor Coalition which is the combined effort of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, 4 groups working on LGBT inclusion, the 5 racial ethnic caucus groups in the United Methodist Church, a new environmental group called “Fossil Free UMC”, UM Association of Ministers with Disabilities, and the Western Methodist Justice Movement. (If you want to know more, grab a copy of my sermon, they’re all listed in the footnotes.)5 Although I love the name “Love Your Neighbor” it has also occurred to me that it could be called “The Rainbow Connection.” The views and perspectives are different, but the Coalition works towards inclusion, celebration of diversity, and recognition of the wholeness of humanity of people across many different rainbow spectrums. That’s what they believe love looks like. That’s what they think God’s world is meant to look like.

There is another Coalition. It is the Renewal and Reform Coalition, and it is comprised of Good News, The Confessing Movement, UMAction, and Lifewatch. (Transforming Congregations and the Renew Network are now part of Good News.) If you know what the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) is you might want to take note that UMAction is the UM wing of IRD. If you don’t know, ignorance is bliss. The Renewal and Reform Coalition released their General Conference Agenda last week. As they put it, “The Renewal and Reform Coalition has three major priorities in Portland: 1) uphold biblical teaching on life, marriage, and human sexuality, 2) restore and strengthen the integrity and accountability of our covenant connection as United Methodists, and 3) promote the fair representation and empowerment of our United Methodist brothers and sisters outside the U.S.”6

To be more specific, their legislative goals include: to remove The United Methodist Church from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; to make sure that the church does not “agree to disagree” about the full humanity of LGBT people; to significantly tighten restrictions on clergy preforming same sex marriages (including a mandatory minimum penalty of a one year suspension); “broadening the definition of ‘self-avowed practicing homosexual,’ so that those who are married to a same-sex person or who have publicly acknowledged being a practicing homosexual would no longer be able to serve as clergy”; “adding as a chargeable offense ‘interfering with the General Conference or another United Methodist body or agency’s ability to conduct business,’ in order to counteract the disruption of General Conference and other agencies by activists.”; and much more!

The church that the Love Your Neighbor Coalition dreams of (and believes God to want) and the church that the Renewal and Reform Coalition dreams of (and believes God to want) do not look the same. Unfortunately, the Renewal and Reform Coalition has the voting majority on most (if not all) issues.

There are plenty of reasons to maintain hope. First of all, the existence of this church is proof that God’s love matters in the world, and no legislation from General Conference will ever change that. Secondly, the Love Your Neighbor Coalition (Rainbow Connection) may be prepared to LOSE, but they aren’t going to sit down and take it! There is a significant non-violent resistance strategy. I’m going to a training on it this Saturday. A Bishop and a pastor did a wedding yesterday in NC and got news of it onto CBS! More is coming. The commitment to sharing God’s love in the world is deep and wide. (Fair warning, this resistance may lead to my arrest. I’m not concerned about this, and I hope you won’t worry either. Portland, OR is friendly to protestors.)

God’s dreamers put God’s love into action to create the world as God would have it be. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is hard. It doesn’t really matter though, because God’s love is worth it! May the dreamers who seek to welcome all of God’s people into God’s holy church continue to do their work and find their way, so that the rainbows of peoples in the world might know they are worthy of God’s love and they are enough. Kermit sang, “Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.”7 I think we found it – now we get to use it. Thanks be to God. Amen



1“Rainbow Connection” in The Muppet Movie Original Soundtrack Recording, Kermit, 1979.

2“Imagine” John Lennon, 1971.

3“They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love” Peter Scholtes, 1966.

4 Jack Mahoney SJ, “Why a ‘New’ Commandment?” http: //www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120713_1.htm Posted on: 13th July 2012, accessed on April 23, 2016.

5Affirmation, Black Methodists for Church Renewal. Fossil Free UMC. Love Prevails.MARCHA: Metodistas Asociados Representando la Causa Hispano-Americanos,Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA), Methodists in New Directions (MIND),National Federation of Asian American United Methodists (NFAAUM), Native American International Caucus (NAIC), Pacific Islanders Caucus of United Methodists (PINCUM),Reconciling Ministries Network, United Methodist Association of Ministers with Disabilities, Western Methodist Justice Movement (WMJM)

6Steve Beard “Renewal Agenda for General Conference”http://goodnewsmag.org/2016/04/renewal-agenda-for-general-conference/ Published April 13, 2016, accessed April 21, 2016.

7“Rainbow Connection” in The Muppet Movie Original Soundtrack Recording, Kermit, 1979.

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

Sermons

Untitled

  • April 17, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I’m cheating. The Acts reading is supposed to be the reading today according to the Revised Common Lectionary whose advice I tend to follow most of the time. The Mark reading is not. It simply made sense to me that we should look at these two stories together. In truth, the nerdiest option would have been to use Luke 8:40-56 as the gospel reading, because then we’d be dealing with two versions of a story from the SAME AUTHOR, but Luke edits out Mark’s verbatim, “Talitha, cum” and I wanted to include it, so I let story telling take precedence this week.  So I’m cheating on the Lectionary AND on my inner nerd for the sake of this sermon.

In Acts Peter uses the woman’s name. Tabitha, which means gazelle, to say “Tabitha, get up.” In Mark, Jesus says “Talitha, cum” and texts tells us that it means, “Little girl, get up.” The characters are not the same. Tabitha in Acts is a faithful disciple, a follower of the way, well known and well loved for her generosity and kindness. The sweet little detail about her death – that as the people gathered around to grieve, they showed each other the articles of clothing that she had made them – seems to bring the story across time. Those who make handmade clothing still often have that impact on others. (ah hem. Needlework ministry.)

Talitha is not a name. We don’t know the name of the 12 year old girl in Mark. She’s the daughter of a local religious leader, and that’s all we know. In fact, her story is told around the edges of the story of the hemorrhaging woman. The woman had been bleeding for 12 years. The girl had been alive for 12 years. 12 isn’t usually a random number in Scripture, it tends to refer to Israel as a whole. Perhaps the suggestion here is that Jesus was healing all of Israel.

So, the people who are healed are not the same. Tabitha is a grown woman, the little girl is not. Yet, Tabitha and talitha, sound really similar. This leaves us with two options. One is that there is one story remembered in two variations. The other is that they’re told in similar ways in order to make a particular point. In that case, the point is that Peter was presented as being like Jesus. The power that Jesus had possess to heal, even to call someone back from (the brink of) death, now resided in Peter. That’s the story of resurrection – that the Body of Christ which was once limited to Jesus himself now becomes the shared reality of the disciples of Christ. The powers that Jesus once held are now shared among his followers. If the stories are intentionally similar, it is to make just that point. If not, it is worth wondering why this story so pervaded the collective consciousness of the early Christian movement to be remembered in multiple ways.

Now, as the three people who are healed in these two stories are all women, it is a excellent reminder that Jesus (and the early church) cared enough about women to spend time healing them. Unfortunately, to have integrity with these passages requires more than just pointing out that women matter too or that Peter was able to act as a healer as Jesus had acted as a healer. To have integrity requires acknowledging that while these stories made sense in a first century context, they’re quite challenging to faith today, especially faith that does not wish to ignore the gift of scientific knowledge.

Within the first century context in which they were written, it wasn’t so hard. Contemporary medicine was quite un-advanced and both sickness and healing were best understood as demons entering and leaving the body. So, faith healing was as good of an explanation as anything, and to associate Jesus/Peter with raising women assumed dead wasn’t particularly extraordinary, though it was certainly an affirmation of them.

We don’t exist in the same worldview anymore, and I don’t think we’re supposed to. We don’t associate illness with demons. We don’t associate healing with exorcisms. And, I suspect that if we take these stories seriously enough, we can start to get squirmy. They don’t make sense, and yet there are a LOT of healing stories in the Gospels and beyond. What are we to do with stories that present Jesus as having healing superpowers?

Taking the Bible seriously means we have to struggle with healing stories that don’t make a lot of sense to us as 21st century Christians. So, what are our options?

  1. Obviously, we could simply throw the stories out as fiction, and ignore them. This would fit if we think of the miraculous healings as simply being included so that people would take Jesus seriously as a teacher.
  2. My seminary professors believed that the Gospels were written in the context of the Roman Empire, and were therefore intentionally designed to present Jesus as “better than” the various gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman tradition. Thus, in any given miracle story, they’d find a similar story from Greek or Roman God and point out that the Jesus version was BETTER. Then the miracles and healings are a form of bragging about how great Jesus was, and are designed to bring people to the faith.
  3. Just to be contrary, we COULD take the stories as factual truths. That would likely lead us to assuming that Jesus was categorically different than any other human who walked the face of the earth, and fits very well within the idea that Jesus was God-incarnate. God’s power existed in his human form and was able to bring healing wherever God/Jesus choose. This leads us down a very dangerous path though, because if God is able to step in and heal anyone at any time, and simply chooses not to, then God is responsible for much of the suffering in the world.
  4. My dear friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green suggests another alternative. She believes that Jesus loved people with the love that God has for them. She believes that love – true, pure, unadulterated, unconditional love – is healing to bodies and spirits. She thinks that when Jesus looked someone in the eye or touched them while being connected to the depth of God’s love for them, they were profoundly changed, and often healed. More and more it seems that science shows us how connected our bodies and spirits really are… our stress impacts our heartrates, our sadness lowers our immune systems, our joy helps our digestion. It makes sense that experiencing deep pure love could provide healing to people. It doesn’t quite make sense out of raising people from death or comas, but it sure gets us closer. (And, of course, in this case it presumes that that love was then passed to Peter and therefore to us.)
  5. I think there is one more option (beyond the option to take each of these with some seriousness and bounce between them as we see fit). I think there is an option to see the stories PRIMARILY as metaphor. Or, as John Dominic Crossan likes to say, “there are parables ABOUT Jesus” in addition to the “parables of Jesus.” The healing stories can be mined for their meaning without assuming that they happened as they’re said to happen. That is, think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Did it happen? Well, probably not. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Jesus was telling a story that ACTUALLY happened, but it doesn’t matter in the least IF it happened, because the story itself is the point. It is possible to consider the healing narratives in the same way.

While leaving you the freedom to choose whichever of the options you like most today, I am going to focus on the last one. In the Gospel lesson two healings are woven together into a single narrative. In one case the young girl is restored to life, she had been (presumed) dead. In another case a woman was restored to life, she had been impoverished and weakened for 12 years, and connecting to Jesus restored her to full life. The two stories interweave, suggesting that the fullness of life restored is as valuable as life restored. Perhaps they suggest that Jesus offers a new way of life and fuller, more abundant form of life. Likely, because they are intersecting and because the both use the number 12, the indication is that the healing of God is both individual and communal.

In any life there are places of brokenness and hurt in need of healing. In most lives there are pieces of ourselves that are presumed dead – or have simply been bleeding for so long that it is unimaginable that they will ever stop. Yet, this story suggests that God’s creative life-force energy is not stopped in the places we presume it will end. Jesus called the young girl back to life. God calls us to a fuller and more whole life, including by healing the places within us that we’ve assumed are unhealable or dead.

I may be more aware of the places that we assume are dead communally than individually. While we believe in a God who calls forth life, and life abundant, taking a look at the world can be deeply troubling. Can God really heal racism when it is so entrenched? What about sexism and heterosexism? Can God really heal the multi-generational brokenness of communities? Is peace truly possible? What about justice? Economic inequality is at its all time peak today, and yet with the powers of the military and the threat of nuclear war, is it truly possible to think that it it can be peaceably rebalanced? More simply, given that corporations are now legally, “people” is campaign finance reform truly feasible? What will it take for people to stop making stupid laws about who can pee in what bathroom and instead focus on providing quality education and health care to all people? More locally, what sort of trust do we have that New York State will ever fully fund it’s own legal obligations to school districts – particularly urban districts with mainly students of color – and give students a fair chance in life? That is, what would it take for society to see that all of God’s people are are deeply and infinitely valuable? Can God really do all that? The stories, and our faith, tell us that God is loving, creative, powerful, and at work in the world in individual AND communal healing.

The continuation of the story in Acts, with Peter, suggests that we have powers of healing as well! The community of faith is able to be a source of healing in the world, and I have certainly known it to be so. I was a quiet and awkward child, but my church loved me as I was and saw potential in me. I was scared and self-conscious high school graduate, but church camp had a place to receive my gifts. When I came here, to this church, I was still aching from the loss of my beloved Annual Conference, and I was afraid that the gifts I had weren’t wanted in The United Methodist Church. Communal healing has also been visible in my life. The power of being loved by a community changes lives. That is, throughout my life, God has been a source of healing – individual and communal – and God’s people have been a source of healing – individual and communal.

Love really does heal. Thanks be to God. Amen

Sermon Talk Back Questions

Where have you seen God at work in healing in your own life?

Where have you seen God at work healing in our communities?

Which ones of the 5 options do you find useful in your life today?

Has that changed over the course of your lifetime?

Are there other options that you use that I’ve missed?

What do YOU make of these two similar stories?

–

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

April 17, 2016

Sermons

“Displacement”based on Acts 9:1-20 and John 21:1-19

  • April 10, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Before Jesus called them, most of the disciples had been fisherman. It was their occupation. They supported their families by fishing. Likely it was their identity too. They were multi-generational fisherman. They were part of fishing families and fishing communities. (Don’t worry, I don’t intend to make a metaphor out of this.)

I suspect that the story we read from John today comes from different origins than the other Easter stories in John. It got edited in as the third appearance, but it works pretty well as a stand alone story, and it likely was one. Peter is presented as the natural leader. He says he wants to go fishing, and everyone else says they’ll go with him. It makes a lot of sense that fisherman born and bred would return to the Sea in the midst of turmoil when they didn’t know what else to do.

I don’t know enough about fishing the Sea of Tiberias to know if a night’s fishing being utterly unsuccessful was common, but I’m also not entirely sure that the disciples would have spent much of their energy trying to catch fish that night. It seems that the comfort may have been the familiarity of the surroundings and the nighttime freedom to talk or not as they wished. It was a good place to grieve.

Now the bit in the story about casting the nets “to the other side” and having fish essentially leap into them seems like it is set up for allegory, but I’m going to leave those be and simply point out that in that moment Jesus was recognized. In fact, John recognized Jesus, but Peter jumped out of the boat to swim to him. People are different, and have different skills and responses. One can figure out what is going on, another is quick to respond with joy.

I’ve been trying to figure out why Peter would get dressed and THEN jump into the water, when most people would do it the other way. I guessed maybe it was a sign of respect for Jesus, but I looked it up in the Jewish Annotated New Testament and all they had to say was, “It is odd that Peter dresses and then jumps into the sea.”1

The best part of this story happens when they all get to shore. Jesus has made a fire and prepared some fish and bread, although he adds to the fire some of the fish they’d caught. In the Emmaus story, the disciples know Jesus in the breaking of the bread, but in this story they knew him in the abundance he provided of the fish. Yet the way that he shares the food still rings with celebration of communion. “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.” (v. 13)

This is the first and only meal that it is said Jesus cooks. He makes them breakfast after they’ve been out on the water all night tending their souls.  He provides for them when they need it most. It is an extraordinary little story in that way, Jesus is a bit more domestic than we otherwise see him. Before the resurrection he cared for people’s physical needs on a regular basis, but not as the cook. This is a bit earthier!

The story almost suggests that the disciples were silent through the meal, but we really don’t know. The sweet, strange story of the nets full of fish and breakfast waiting on the shore turns toward Peter giving him both an opportunity for forgiveness and a direction in life. Often this part of the story has gotten my fuller attention. Today I simply want to point out that the three questions seem likely to exist in order to erase the three denials that had earlier occurred. Secondly, the three questions have slightly different nuances, but they’re insignificant. Jesus instructs Peter to tend and feed the sheep and lambs as a response to Peter’s love for Jesus.

The work that had been Jesus’ is now passed on. In this case is is to Peter, but by extension to all of us. That’s the Easter story again, for those who are slow to pick up on it. At the end of this passage is a line I hadn’t really heard before. In the end of the conversation Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me.” I find the Gospel of John annoying at times, but it is also a work of brilliance. In John’s version of the call of the disciples, Jesus doesn’t call Peter! Peter’s brother Andrew started following Jesus and invited Peter to come along. Peter’s call to follow doesn’t happen until this conversation! It also become a call to all who hear – those who weren’t called in the beginning of the story are still called to follow by the end of it. Furthermore, the call to “follow” happens during the LAST vision of Jesus’ resurrection, in John. The following has to happen by the guidance of the Spirit and the capacity of the disciples to trust themselves to know what to do!

It has struck me this week how displacing all of this would have been for the disciples. They’d been displaced by choosing to travel with Jesus and had given up the lives they knew. Then they were displaced by the death of Jesus, and lost the life they’d come to know with him. That’s where we found them at the beginning of the story, trying to find their place again by returning to the lives they knew. Instead, by the end of today’s story all sense a security has been stripped from them. They are to continue the work of Jesus, but without Jesus. They are to upset the system of the Empire, without any promises of safety, and indeed Jesus points out that they too will suffer by tending and feeding the sheep and the lambs. The fishermen and their families from Galilee who wandered the Jewish countryside with Jesus end up settling in Jerusalem and leading the rest of the followers of The Way… lives still changed by the words “Follow me.”

I’m stuck as well that their lives moved from pretty “normal” to very abnormal. They were regular people, working hard to make their lives go as well as they could before they met Jesus. They were productive members of society, making money in one of the standard ways. They were contributing to society.

And then Jesus displaced them.

Just as Jesus didn’t work for money during his ministry, as far as I can tell, the apostles didn’t work for money again after his resurrection. They were so busy leading The Way, that they couldn’t. Other people’s offerings supported their lives.

Which is to say they “stopped” contributing to society. They were no longer productive workers. Isn’t that funny? The Protestant Work Ethic is a real thing, and in the USA many of us were practically suckled on it. Yet the followers of Jesus stepped out of the system of productivity in order to redistribute resources and teach another way. It is as if their lives were the Sabbath of the Hebrew Bible, a reminder that life is more than productivity and contributions to society, that we are made in the image of God, and we are whole already as we are. They began to live Sabbath – to focus on relationships and not on work. That’s some serious displacement.

There are rather amazing parallels between today’s Gospel lesson and the story of the conversion of Saul. For the first time, I noticed that the conversion wasn’t REALLY instantaneous, as I’ve often heard people describe it. Yes, he had an instant where he fell, and he became blind, and he had a conversation with Jesus (who was dead.) But he had the scales on his eyes for 3 days, while fasting, before Ananias comes to talk with him and they fall off. At that point he got baptized, but he was with the disciples for “several days” after that and THEN he began to preach about Jesus saying, “He is the Son of God.” (Which, just in case you didn’t know, was blaspheming the Emperor of the Roman Empire who claimed that particular title as one piece of his authority.)

Saul’s displacement happened in about a week. He thought he knew what his contribution to society was. In addition to making his living as a tent-maker (which he continued to do), his passion was caring for the faith by making sure that heresies and bad teaching didn’t take seed in the faith that formed his life. He was convinced that the followers of Jesus’ way were the problem, and he was willing to use his life to fix it – until this happened. Then he took his passion and conviction and used to FOR the good of The Way of Jesus.

Have you ever seen that video of a random person dancing to the beat of their own drum in random places? It ends up making the point that one person dancing is one person dancing! However, the moment a second person chooses to join in, the first time a follower joins in, it usually becomes a dance party. Sometimes it is one person who dances, sometimes it is hundreds, but the difference is not the first dancer – it is the second.

It is possible that Paul is the “second dancer” of The Way of Jesus. Jesus was the first dancer. He is the one who offered a new take on life and way to deny the powers of the world by focusing on the creative love of God. But Paul is the one who, by following, brought people along. I think the rest of the disciples would have continued to share the message and it would have mattered but only within Judaism. Paul was the one who took the message to the Gentiles, which is super ironic since he was the one who cared most about the faith of Judaism to begin with. He is also the one who pushes for full inclusion of Gentiles in The Way, without conversion to Judaism. Jesus may have founded a movement, but Paul made it popular.

Paul’s displacement pulled out of everything he cared about, including his own life, but gave him a way to change the history of the world. He did continue to make a living for himself, but his real contributions were in sharing a story he’d once found offensive enough to stop by any violent means necessary.

In seminary, as in much of Christianity, there was often a focus on stories of conversion. People talked about the rough lives they’d led, and when they’d connected with God anew, and how that had guided them to ministry. At times I’d get annoyed with the stories, but often I felt insufficient by not having a story of my own. I was raised in United Methodist Church that I loved, I went to church camp, I adored it, at 13 I first considered becoming a pastor, and I’d followed that path from that point on.

In class one day we were assigned to discuss something about conversion in a small group and my friend Andre, who had one of those“standard’ conversion stories offered me a great gift. He asked if I had been “converted” and I said no, and I think I hung my head in shame. We weren’t particularly close, but I think he’d listened to me very deeply to that point. He asked if there was a point in my life when I realized that although my life was good, not everyone else had it as easy. I looked up and said YES, and started telling the story of the first time I’d noticed. He smiled at me and said that I was one of the people with an inverted conversion story. My conversion was realizing how broken the world was and being moved to participate in healing it. Put another way, becoming aware of my privileges and that they weren’t shared was a form of conversion. That is a story that I’ve lived time and time again.

It has been displacement for me at times too. As it was for Peter, and for Paul, and as it has been for people who didn’t have a connection to the Divine and later found one. God messes things up. God displaces us so that we can be placed appropriately. And frankly, God seems to do it often. So the next time you are trying to contribute to the world and it all gets turned upside down, remember that God may be displacing you – for the sake of good. Amen

—

1 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).

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

April 10, 2016

Sermons

“Shouting Stones” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-19; Luke 19:28-40

  • March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I heard a story once of a United Methodist Church invited to be a part of a local Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It was a small church, they didn’t feel like they make much of a difference, but they were invited and they went! A few weeks ahead of time they’d left fliers along the parade route letting residents know that they’d be collecting underwear and socks for kids as they paraded. When the day came it was a bit cold and definitely cloudy. They were near the end of the parade, and not all of them wanted to go after all. But they did it anyway.

The parade route wound through a residential area and when the church group passed by (complete with a BIG sign), residents would yell after them “hey! Wait! I’ve got something for you!” and they’d watch as people ran into their houses and ran back out with the gifts for children. It was amazing, as not all of the residents seemed to have much to share.

Near the end of the route, standing in front of a gas station, came a young boy carrying as many cans of soup as he could hold. He stuck them in the arms of the ones closest to him and said, “These are for the hungry children!” The church didn’t correct him, they took the gift and added it to their pile.

Afterward, they reflected on their experience and realized that most of the people on that route weren’t church goers, didn’t have much to spare, and they might have though wouldn’t care about kids needing new socks … and yet they RAN to give their gifts! They didn’t want to be left behind. They -and that one young boy with the soup especially – CARED and they had gifts they wanted to offer. The church had made it possible for the people to give gifts they wanted to give!

In so many ways, that Saint Patrick’s Day parade embodies the spirit of Palm Sunday!

Now, Jesus wasn’t the only one going into Jerusalem around that time. The Passover was a holy celebration, and many pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate it. The city got 5 times bigger at Passover with so many people coming in. In fact, that’s the reason that Pilate, as the Roman appointed governor came into the city at Passover. They were worried that with all those people together celebrating the Passover things might get unruly.

As a reminder, the Jewish holiday of Passover remembers God’s saving actions in freeing the Israelites from their oppressors in Egypt. So, a whole bunch of Israelites oppressed by the Roman Empire were gathering together in their former capital to celebrate God’s actions to free them from oppression, and it made their current oppressors nervous.

That’s why Pilate came in every year. It was a good time to have some extra Roman military power, to remind the people that they would not stand for a revolt or any sort of rebellion. Pilate came in with all the flash and glory of the Empire – showing of the Empire’s power and threatening anyone who would deny the Empire the right to rule Israel. He came in from the coast – from the west, riding a horse, with drums and golden eagle flags and flash and power.

Jesus came in from the East. He came riding on the donkey – fulfilling a Jewish prophesy about God’s appointed King who would free them from oppression. That is, Zechariah 9:9b, “Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Riding a donkey was also the way that King Solomon entered when he became king. In fact, I’ve heard it suggested in that in the ancient Middle East Kings rode horses to war, but rode donkeys when they came in peace.1 Some of the people were at the Western Gate greeting the power of the Empire. Some of the people were parading with Jesus toward the Eastern gate. Most of them were people without any hope of access to power or money through the economic system that existed within the Roman Empire. Yet, they had hope that God’s actions through Jesus might make a difference for them.

They were excited and hopeful, and they were yelling. The Gospel says they were yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“ To our ears that may sound pretty standard. It certainly excesses exuberance, but it also just sounds like…. the Bible. So, if you aren’t paying attention to it, you might not notice that what they were saying was sedition!2

Israel was a part of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Caesar was the King – God was not, and Jesus was not. Rome ruled Israel, God did not.

Jesus was riding a donkey, which was the way that kings entered Jerusalem. He had a crowd around him supporting him. They were waving Palm branches, which were essentially the national flag of Israel, and they were proclaiming LOUDLY that Jesus was the king – and the one appointed by God. These were words and actions of a rebellion against the Empire – at exactly the same time that the army was coming into the city to stop rebellions.

There were some who tried to silence the crowds – to warn them of what would happen if the Roman Empire found out that people were yelling such things. But Jesus responds that they can’t be silenced. He suggests that the movement has begun and it is unstoppable. He uses the metaphor that if the people were silenced the stones would start shouting. As a child I took that literally, but these days I tend to think it means that the energy and hope of the movement couldn’t be silenced.

Jesus would end up dead by the end of the week, killed for leading a VIOLENT revolt against the Empire. Of course, it wasn’t violent, but it was a revolt. They thought that if they killed him, the movement would stop. We today are the proof that the stones would shout out – the movement can’t be silenced.

It is like the St. Patty’s day parade and the people running from their homes with their hands full of underwear. You’d think they didn’t have anything to give, but it didn’t stop them from giving it! You’d think the Israelite peasants would be too scared to rebel, but they were unstoppable. You’d think the movement started by a backwater Jew in an an Empire from 2000 years ago would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t. The stones still cry out.

For more than a year now I’ve been working with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition in preparation for General Conference in May. As a person who has studied math, and a person paying attention to demographics in The United Methodist Church I have a lot of clarity about what to expect from General Conference: a whole lot of pain and a hard shift towards a more conservative church. The question is how conservative it will become. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wondered why I’m doing progressive organizing in a church where putting our stamp of approval on a piece of legislation almost guarantees that it won’t pass. There have been plenty of times since my first trip to General Conference in 2004 where I have wondered why I stay in this denomination that does such great harm to my sisters and brothers in faith who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

I don’t think the people who waved palm branches and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were stupid. They knew for sure that it was an act of rebellion, they knew it was seriously dangerous for them and for Jesus, and I suspect they knew that it was REALLY REALLY unlikely that Jesus would live to be king. I can’t be sure what any of them thought, but the Gospels themselves make it clear that Jesus knew the actions of Palm Sunday would get him killed, and I suspect most of the participants did too.

So why did they do it? They were desperate and there was very little reason to have hope outside of the Jesus movement. Peasants were dying young after living lives of hard labor and undernourishment. There wasn’t any reason to believe that would change on its own. Jesus brought hope. He brought a message that was different: showing people ways to work together to have enough, suggesting that the values of the world were all messed up, seeing and caring about women, children, people who were ill or injured, and people living in poverty. Jesus was the living reminder that God still cared, that steadfast love endures forever. They voted for that with their lives and their livelihoods. The cloaks they spread were often the only thing keeping them alive at night, protecting them from the desert night’s chill, and they choose to lay their cloaks before Jesus just like they choose to shout the words that could get them all killed.

They knew they might all die, and it was worth it anyway to have a reason to hope in God.

That sure makes General Conference seem less important! But truth be told, as much as I know that General Conference will be a disaster from a progressive perspective, I have a tiny bit of hope. There are some good things that might happen: legislation written by UM clergy with disabilities to expand the denomination’s care for people with disabilities will likely pass! The work done by Fossil Free UMC to get the denomination’s resources out of fossil fuels might pass and similar work done to get resources out of companies that support the occupation of Palestine might too. (And since our pension plan is worth ~$21 billion, what we do with our investments MATTERS.) And maybe, just maybe, even though it is a long shot, we might pass the legislation that creates global equity in The United Methodist Church and makes us true sisters and brothers with United Methodists outside of the United States.

Most of the injustices of the church will stand, I suspect there will be MORE injustice when we’re done with General Conference then there are now, and yet I’m going to go and work on organizing the progressive voice because I believe that calling for justice in the church and the world is the work of God. And maybe, just maybe, the Spirit will find a way to bring more good than bad out of it all. God has done weirder things already, even if it seems statistically unlikely to me!

Those Palm Sunday crowds took risks for the sake of hope.

They paid attention to what God was up to, even when chances were very slim that God’s loving-kindness and justice would end up in charge. They celebrated God, and they celebrated hope, and they came together cheering for possibility – even though it was dangerous to their LIVES.

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

1http://www.gotquestions.org/king-ride-donkey.html

2The gist of this whole sermon comes from Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan’s book “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” (Harper Collins: 2006). This is one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of reframing my understanding of Palm Sunday, and a whole lot of other things.

–

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

March 20, 2016

Sermons

“Questions about Mary (of Bethany)”based on  John 12:1-8

  • March 13, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

A few years ago at Thanksgiving, my immediate family spent time watching videos from the years my brother and I were kids. My grandfather had acquired a video camera when I was about 8, and I have very clear memories of trying to avoid the camera like the plague, although I seemingly failed. There were a lot of learnings in the watching of those videos, but I want to tell you today about just one. I learned that my grandfather had an accent!

This was mind blowing information for me. We were VERY close to our grandparents growing up, we spent all holidays and birthdays together, and weekends at their house. He was probably my favorite person to ever walk the face of the earth, and it is because of how he loved me that I can comprehend God’s love as unconditional.

However, I didn’t know he had an accent. He died when I was TWENTY, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t until he’d been dead for more than a decade and then I heard his voice again that I was able to hear it. Until that point he’d been so close to me that it hadn’t occurred to me that anything was out of the ordinary about him – mostly I guess because he was my ordinary. It is also possible that I’m an idiot. I’m not sure.

But I’m going with the point that overfamiliarity can blind us. I’m going with that point because I was reading the gospel this week and the WORLD’S MOST OBVIOUS question jumped out at me. It is, of course, not one that I’ve ever thought over before, even though I’ve heard this story and ones like it plenty of times, and likely preached them – often.

Ready?

Why were Martha, Mary, and Lazarus all living together? They’re presented as adults, and their own parents aren’t mentioned. They are said to be siblings, but no spouses are mentioned, and they’re all in the same household. This wasn’t a THING. Unlike 2016 where singleness in adulthood is normal, and this would simply be a notable attribute along the lines of “Oh, yeah, Mary’s cool. In fact, she’s so cool that she can manage to live with her sister and brother! They rent a place in Bellevue.”

Adult singleness and adult siblings living together was significantly less common 2000 years ago in Israel. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to identify a lot of scholarship on this issue. It seems, as per normal, that my questions aren’t what anyone else wants to answer. I did find a few articles, but I have some questions about the validity of their scholarship.1 Basically there appear to be a few theories about why Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all living together in their adulthoods:

They are actually quite young, and in fact too young to be married. This would be REALLY young, as average marriage age (of women) was between 14 and 16.

The women may be widows who didn’t remarry.

Martha and Mary may have “belonged to an ascetic sect and had chosen singleness and celibacy.”2

In particular, “It is believed that a colony of ascetics (perhaps Essenes) lived in Bethany. Literary evidence from one the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that these ascetics had a hospice in Bethany for the ritually unclean, which included lepers . The ascetics were known for their acts of charity and it is most likely that their hospice also helped and accommodated the poor and destitute.”3

There are a few other little things that I learned along the way in asking this question that I just have to share with you because they’re wonderful. First of all, Martha may not have been Martha’s name. “The name ‘Martha’ is the feminine form of an Aramaic word meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’, so ‘Martha’ may be a title rather than a name.”4 Also, in all of the gospels, Martha is mentioned first which means that she likely was the older, so this makes all the more sense. This implies that no matter how this went down, Jesus kept visiting a female dominated household. (Also, I sort of want to name a daughter Martha now.)

Next, it seems likely that Lazarus was their little brother. He never has a speaking role, which would make the most sense if he was young. This also makes his death (which was related in the chapter prior to our gospel reading today) all the more sad. I think it is unlikely that Lazarus was a child though. Jesus was really open minded, and broke open barriers with his “let the children come to me” line, but I don’t think that a child would be referred to as “he whom you love”. That, for me, suggests that they may not have all been that young. If Lazarus was “an adult” (whatever that meant at the time, but at least a teenager) but was the younger brother, then Martha and Mary were clearly above normal marrying age. Yet, I would guess that if Lazarus was an adult then he’d be called Master of the household. Perhaps Lazarus was a man with special needs, which would make this all even more awesome.

Yet, really, who knows?

There is always the third option. Bethany, the town in which they’re said to reside, means “Poor House” or “House of Misery”.5 It is even suggested that as “Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem which made it a perfect location for a hospice for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem who became ritually unclean and were unable to participate in the Jewish festivals.”6 As residents of Bethany, it isn’t all that unlikely that the family was involved in running a hospice of sorts. In fact, it would make sense out of this story itself! How did Mary happen to have a nard of perfume worth a year’s wages for a laborer? It would be reasonable that she might have gotten it as a gift from a wealthy former patient.

On the other hand, it could just be that this was a wealthy family headed by Martha, and supportive of Jesus. We don’t know. If they weren’t running a hospice, then it is notable that they had a house large enough to offer hospitality to Jesus AND his disciples (and their families) and the capacity to feed them all, which would be consistent with having enough wealth to own expensive perfume as well. They wouldn’t be the only wealthy, female dominated household that identified with the early Jesus movement either, so that could be.

While I’m muddying waters, I also want to mention that I’m pretty confused about how Jesus MET these siblings anyway. He’s from up north, in Galilee. Its almost a 100 miles away. He is clearly really close to them, and they show up in all the Gospels. This family matters to Jesus. But he spends his life and ministry in Galilee and only visits Jerusalem. In the gospel of John, Jesus is killed because he raises Lazarus from the dead, but he is called to their house because of his existent relationship with them, which we haven’t heard about until he is called. He was already in the area though. How did they know each other? How did they become so close? Mary presents as a disciple. Lazarus is called beloved. Martha and Mary both presume the right to chide Jesus. Don’t you just want to know?

Me too. But I have no theories on this. Sometimes love happens between people (including the deep friendship kind), and it is always amazing. It seems it was amazing for Jesus too. There is perhaps ONE clue. The passage states that the perfume filled the room. That is, it says, “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” This sounds A LOT like Song of Solomon 1:12, “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.” Maybe, just maybe, Jesus and Mary were courting. This is mostly fun because when people tend to theorize about romantic relationships for Jesus, they usually pick Mary of Magdala instead of Mary of Bethany. I’m a rebel.

Now, I have two last things to clarify, this time about our gospel lesson in particular. John’s story is different from the other versions of this story. The setting is different (in the synoptics it happens at Simon the Leper’s house), the woman is different (not a prostitute here), and the location of the perfume is different (it is on his head in the other versions). Only John tells this crazy story of Mary anointing his FEET and them wiping them off with her HAIR. It is also only John who presents the action of Jesus on the last night he was with them as being FOOT WASHING and not the Last Supper. That means that Mary’s action of washing Jesus feet comes before Jesus chooses to wash his disciples’ feet… almost as if Jesus found the experience so moving that he let it define his ritual of goodbye to his followers.

Also, when Jesus says, “the poor you will always have with you” he is likely quoting Deuteronomy 15:11 which in the NRSV reads “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” It isn’t a passive acceptance of poverty (which I always worried about) but a commandment to share. However, even as he quotes the scripture, he goes on to say, “BUT you will not always have me.” Whoever poured the perfume, wherever, in all the stories Jesus defends the action. One commentator says, “What church serious about discipleship does not struggle with the tension between money spent in beautiful acts of worship and money spent on behalf of the poor?”7 AMEN to that. The affirmation of this passage is of that tension, that both beauty and a response to poverty are necessary.

As in this sermon, life often has more questions than answers. This passage sure does, even though its familiarity can be blinding. That’s true of a lot of the Bible, at least for me. There are some great take aways from this, even in the midst of all the questions though: Jesus had the capacity to form deep, meaningful friendships – including with strong women. Therefore relationships REALLY matter. Beauty has inherent value, as does taking care of each other. And the way we follow is a way of servant leadership – of foot washing – and radical expression of love. May both the questions and the answer bless us all this week. Amen

1Issues: lack of doctorate; way of describing Christianity; and lack of footnotes. Presumably the last one should matter the most, as I don’t have a doctorate either.

2“Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany” in New Life written by Marg Mowczko found at http://newlife.id.au/christian-living/martha-mary-and-lazarus-of-bethany/ on March 12, 2016.

3Ibid

4Ibid. (I really liked this article, I just wish it was better footnoted…)

5Ibid

6Ibid

7H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Homiletical Perspective on John 12:1-8” in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 2 ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) p. 145.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 13, 2016

Sermons

“Strange Prophetic Voices” based on Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

  • February 29, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I once asked a confirmation class about joy. They said that the shortest spurts of happiness come from material gifts, while the longest living joy comes from relationships. They understood, as well, that happiness is fleeting, but joy comes from within.

When I prepare funerals, I ask families to tell me what the person loved. Almost always the first answer is relational – spouse, children, family, friends, church family, all of the above…. and then come the answers that are active: gardening, sports, some club, travel, cooking, work etc. (Sometimes sports affiliation arise as well. Loving or hating the Yankees is, apparently, identity forming.) Almost always, the list of what a person loves fits into “relationships” and “activities.”

At times, I wonder how that question would be answered for me. I’m sure just about anyone could say people and skiing and Sky Lake, but beyond that its not fully clear. Our concept of what we love may be different than what others see of us. What we love is visible by what we DO, not just what we think about doing. I wonder how what I do is different from what I think.

Hopefully what we DO, what we spend our time on and show our love for, are the rich food and bread that truly feed us. That is, we seek to live so that the places we put our love may be the ones that feed our inner spring of joy. The book of Isaiah almost outdoes itself with the questions of 55:2: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” Why DO we spend our time on activities that don’t feed our souls? Why DO we spend money on things that won’t feed any part of us?

This is a passage that scholars believe was written during the exile. That is, the first hearers were in captivity in a foreign land. I don’t know how Babylonians treated their war captives for sure, but it seems reasonable to assume that they were similar to most other nations throughout time. I doubt there was rich food to be had, nor milk. There may have been bread, and lousy wine, but maybe not a lot of it. I don’t know if they were getting wages, but if they were, they were likely not very high. I doubt as well that they had much choice about what they did with their labor.

On that basis, this strange prophecy seems pie in the sky high. The suggestion is that God will provide abundant wine and milk, bread and rich food – for free. These weren’t things they were getting at all. God is said to reaffirm God’s love for David and the Davidic covenant, but the king’s line had been killed off. It is said that the nations will run to Israel, but Israel can’t even go home. Why would Isaiah say such words to people who knew better?

They’d gone without enough food for a long time. They knew that God hadn’t provided. They’d labored for other people’s wealth for a long time. They knew that God hadn’t intervened.

This is a passage that indicates that God is going to change God’s mind and choose to take care of the people again, after God has intentionally chosen not to for a while. After all, it ends with a call to repentance, suggesting that God wants to give these good gifts, but that they are contingent on the people’s choice to return to God. This is the point where I get squirmy. It sounds a lot like preaching to the Syrian refugees that if they return to “right worship” and “regular prayer” that God will take care of them again.

Yet, it speaks a deep truth. In the book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” David Graeber suggests that all the world’s major religions emerged as counters to the world’s markets. As market economies came into being, and dehumanized in profound ways (paid armies, unraveling of community ties, interest, debt slavery, etc) there was a need for a voice to call into question the standards of the market. Each of the world’s religions argues against usury (high interest), affirms the value of human life, calls on people to treat each other as precious, rebukes the acquisition of excessive material goods, and claims that the deeper meaning of life cannot be bought nor sold. That is, each of the major world religions argues against the underlying principles of the world’s markets. Graeber goes further to indicate how the various ways that markets developed around the world impacted the ways that each of the religions took on different stances and flavors.

Isaiah’s call to repentance is a stronghold of this principle. Even speaking to captives in a foreign land, he calls them away from the principles of the market into the principles of God. Isaiah refuses the idea that access to food should be reserved to those who have money! Isaiah suggests that God offers the good stuff without cost, upsetting the whole system. Isaiah diminishes the value of work itself as a means of survival. (It is pretty socialist, I’ll admit. Then again, capitalism isn’t a Biblical value.) Isaiah calls the people out of the system that dehumanizes and into a relationship with God that can vaccinate them against the values of the market.

Jesus’ parable does some similar things. May we remember that nurturing a tree in the desert of Israel takes serious resources. Water is scarce, and trees need water! (Think the crisis of almond farming in CA during this epic drought.) Fertile soil takes effort and resources. Market economies would suggest that the tree was wasting preciously allocated resources.

Yet, the gardener doesn’t want to give up on the tree that has been wasting resources though. Instead, the gardner wants to GIVE MORE to that tree – to bury it in manure and give it every chance it might have to bear fruit. Rather than blame the tree, the gardener seems to take blame on himself, for not giving it all it needs. This doesn’t make sense! It makes sense to uproot the tree and put in a new one – if we are talking about trees. More likely this passage is about Israel’s spiritual condition (because that’s how the metaphor usually goes in the Bible). Like Isaiah, this passage is a call to repentance.

Isn’t it interesting though, to reconsider repentance? What if it isn’t about sins in the ways that it so often as been discussed, but rather is about turning way from the morals of the market economy and turning to the morals of God and God’s kin-dom? Remember, just in case I haven’t said it recently, that the Bible indicates that our work as Jesus followers is to transform the world we have into one where everyone has enough and the gifts of life abundant are shared among everyone – the kin-dom. Doesn’t that take the sting out of repentance and make it really awesome? (#ThingsNoOneExpectedThePreacherToSay)

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m happy to say that the Gospel theologically debunks the issues that the Isaiah passage presents! The Isaiah passage, in case you forgot, implies that exile is the fault of the people for not being sufficiently faithful to God. This is a pretty normal perspective in the Bible, although not the only one. It is probably fair to call it the Deuteronomy perspective. It may also be worth remembering that the end of the exile came about 500 years before Jesus was born, but the meantime hadn’t been great for the Jews. First they were a vassal state of Persia (although they got to go home, which was great), and then Greece, and then Rome. So the wounds of the exile were still present among the Jews.

The two particular problems that get named are unique to Luke, unknown in other sources, and yet feasible historically. The first is the murder of a bunch of Galileans in Jerusalem while they were bringing ritual sacrifices to the temple. Historically speaking, if this happened, it was assumed that they were part of a violent revolt against the empire. That’s feasible. The second is the death of a group of people when part of the wall of Jerusalem fell on them. The existence of a tower there hasn’t been confirmed, but it is a place where it would have made sense to have a tower.

The point, however, that is made is that the people didn’t die because God was punishing them. They were no different from everyone else. Those who lived couldn’t claim to be alive because they were better. Death and destruction is not a punishment from God, nor and life abundant a sign of God’s favor. Those premises are rejected, and it has significant consequences for understanding the world and the Bible. Of course, it also gets turned into a call for repentance, because it is Lent and all scriptures call for repentance. Good thing we found a way to LIKE repentance.

The scriptures serve to remind us to concentrate on the things we love and the things that bring us life. Joy can’t be purchased. The premises of the market are wrong. We need not be distracted by them, particularly because it makes it harder to the markets to account for the ways they dehumanize God’s beloved people.

Seek joy where it can be found: in relationships with people you love and activities you deeply enjoy. That, it turns out, is part of turning the world upside down – to how God would have it be. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 28, 2016

Sermons

“Seriously, Was Jesus Crazy?” based on Luke 13:31-35

  • February 21, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I find this Gospel distressing. Most of the time when I read the Gospel I find myself challenged by the calls for deeper humanity. Sometimes I find myself confused. This is one of the weeks when I am simply distressed. Maybe Jesus really was crazy, and I’ve devoted my life to following a crazy man.

I keep thinking about Simone Weil, a French agnostic-Jewish-mystic woman who was strongly attracted to the stories of Jesus. She was brilliant and profound, her writings at one and the same time make more sense than anything ever AND make no sense at all. She died during WWII in the United States, at the age of 34, because she refused to eat more food than the rations given in occupied France, and she had tuberculous and couldn’t survive on such little food. She might have been crazy, or she might have been one of the few people in all the world who wasn’t, and I can never quite tell.

Often, that seems to be a principle that apples to Jesus as well, but that’s not what I’m taking about in reference to this Gospel lesson. In this one, at least to begin with, Jesus appears to make no sense at all.

The Pharisees, who were not Jesus supporters, break away from their usual distain to let him know that the Roman appointed leader of Galilee (Herod) wants to kill him. They think he should leave. Jesus, you’ve probably heard of him, he’s the one known to say “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” and “let the children come to me”, you know, that guy … Jesus responds with an insult to Herod.

He tells them to go tell “that fox” (which is in NO POSSIBLE WAY anything but an insult) that he’ll go in three days when he darn well wants to. Furthermore, they’ll told to inform Herod that he can’t kill Jesus because Jesus can only be killed in Jerusalem. Then he talks about how much he loves Jerusalem. Then he makes an off the wall prediction, one that I can’t even summarize, so let’s hear it again, “I tell you, you certainly won’t see me again until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

He sounds like he is struggling with schizophrenia and grandiose delusions.

So, I decided to preach on it. Presumably because there is something wrong with me involving never taking the easy way out. Then, because I decided to preach on it, I had to do research on it, and it turns out there may be a few contextual things that make him seem a bit more sane.

First of all, according the Jesus Seminar, most of the really weird stuff is Luke putting words into Jesus’ mouth to support his own story, and not Jesus himself. They say, “There are…strong reasons for regarding the statements attributed to Jesus in this passage as the literary creations of Luke rather than the remembered sayings of Jesus: (1) The phrasing of v. 32 reflects Luke’s conception of his gospel: Jesus exorcises demons and cures people for two days, then on the third day he reaches his “end” in Jerusalem. This is the plan of Luke’s story. (2) The second saying, v. 33, is cast in Luke’s most characteristic theological formula: it states what ‘must’ (Greek: dei, ‘it is necessary’) take place, because it fulfills the divine plan (compare Luke 9:22, 24:44, Acts 1:16, 9:6, 16; 23:11, 27:24) (3) These sayings do not appear in Q nor in any other written gospel. They are attested to only in Luke.”1 This however, only gets us so far as to ask if Luke is crazy instead of Jesus, if he put the words into Jesus’ mouth as a way of trying to attract people to the story of Jesus.

There is a second piece of context that helps even more. Several scholars pointed out that Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, who was the tetarch of Galilee and Perea was likely not a fan of Jesus’ nor was Jesus a fan of his. It is entirely feasible that this interaction is laced with deep politics, whether it is the words of Jesus or Luke. A scholar points out that, “During his Galilean ministry, [Jesus] never entered two cities particularly associated with Antipas: Sepphoris, which was his first capital, and Tiberias, which Antipas build to replace Sepphoris.”2

So Herod Antipas was an agent of Rome, and therefore represented much of what Jesus and his kin-dom stood against. Jesus seems to avoid him. Jesus likely thought that having a Roman tetarch on the throne that should belong to a son of David was wrong. Herod Antipas, who was charged with keeping the peace, likely wasn’t happy with Jesus either as a follower of the rabble rousing John the Baptist (who he is said to have had killed) or as a rabble rouser himself. As we’ve mentioned, this encounter is unique to Luke, who is also the only Gospel writer to give Herod a role in the death of Jesus. So, there is some literary foreshadowing happening here as well.

Jesus is approached, in the beginning of this little story by the Pharisees. Another scholar notices this saying,

“What is peculiar about this ostensibly protective warning is that the Pharisees have, to this point in the Gospel story, not been Jesus’ friends. They have been among those most threatened by the topsy-turvy kingdom Jesus heralds, among those ‘first’ who may end up ‘last.” Why, suddenly, are these particular Pharisees concerned for his safety? More than likely they have ulterior motives. Possibly they are in league with Herod and hope to drive Jesus out of Herod’s jurisdiction, into the arms of Pilate and Pilate’s responsibility. Then, like a state governor in our day passing on responsibility to federal authorities, at least Herod cannot be blamed for the results of this troublemaker’s actions. Maybe Pilate can figure out a way to get rid of Jesus altogether.

It is admittedly speculative to guess at the motives of those who came to Jesus with Herod’s threat. What is clear is that Jesus, in any event, responds to the outwardly friendly warning as if it were an instance of political machination. ‘Go and tell that fox for me…’ he says, revealing that he knows these Pharisees are in cahoots with the conniving, calculating Herod (v. 32) To use the parlance of our day, Jesus ‘steps up’ to Herod’s oblique, veiled challenge. He lets the Pharisees and Herod know that he is not politically naive.”

Which, I have to say, takes almost all the sting out of the passage for me, and turns it around to being rather interesting. I haven’t heard it here, but within the Church at large I’ve been told to keep Jesus away from politics and visa versa. This has never made any sense to me, as it is pretty clear that politics mattered to Jesus, and got him killed. Furthermore, if the premise of government is that it is at work to create a just, safe, and orderly society for its citizens (I’m not SURE that is the premise, but I like to pretend it is), then the followers of Jesus have a profound responsibility to help it along. Jesus was about building the kin-dom of God, and the work of the followers of Jesus’ way is to continue building the kin-dom of God. The kin-dom of God is the place where all of God’s people (ah hem, all people – same thing) are able to live together in peace because everyone has what they need.  While we can’t expect to get there simply through government, we can’t get there without good government either.

The work of followers of Jesus is help the government pay attention to the ways that our society fails its people, and to help the government fix it. To follow Jesus requires a certain level of political activism. I’m not convinced the system (government) will work without being called out when it fails. Society can get confused about who matters, and assume it is the rich and powerful. It is the work of the people who listen for the voice of God to counter that claim and remind everyone that God’s value is universal, and ours needs to be as well.

So, maybe he wasn’t crazy, and maybe this isn’t the worst Gospel lesson ever. I’m cool with that. In fact, I rather like Jesus calling out Herod in Herod’s own game, and I like him being smarter than the political system. I like the reminder that not even Jesus got to be spiritual all the time and be “too good” for politics. (Which is a very time relevant reminder as the presidential campaign season tempt many of us to decry the system as broken beyond repair and thereby excuse ourselves from the process.) Life involves systems of power, many of which are corrupt, and you have to engage with them. Sometimes, when you are wise and wily like Jesus, you get to upset them and make them better.

There is one more interesting piece of the Gospel. Jesus claims that he can only be killed in Jerusalem. Likely this is Luke’s way of suggesting that the death of Jesus couldn’t happen outside of God’s decision to let it happen, and that fits Luke. But in the same breath that Jesus names his expectation of being killed in the city, he shares his love and yearning for the city. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” The text is reminiscence of parts of the Hebrew Bible, it is not particularly unique. Yet it is beautiful. Both God and Jesus are said to yearn to gather the people together and take care of them. The imagery of a hen gathering her chicks under her wings is powerfully comforting.

My friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thornington Green has very long arms, and many grandchildren. When faced with this passage she has spoken of it as deep truth. She YEARNS to have all of her children and grandchildren gathered all up, in her arms, where she can love them and keep them safe. She stretchers out her long arms to express the yearning and I can see all at once the hen with her chicks, my friend with her family, and God with us.

Jesus says this about the city that will kill him, while offering a political warning to another leader who would have him killed. The political was certainly personal with him! Yet, deadly as it was, it didn’t stop him from loving. Which might be crazy, but then again might be the only sane thing that could have been done.

May we learn from Jesus how to love so well, even if it makes us look a little crazy. Amen

1Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 349.

2Leslie J. Hoppe“Exegetical Perspective of Luke 13:31-35” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 69.

–

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

February 21, 2016

Sermons

“On Bread” based on  Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13

  • February 14, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

It does not require an advanced degree in logic, nor a working knowledge of Greek to have a big question about this passage. Here we go: as Jesus was alone in the desert until the questionable appearance of the Tempter, there was no one there to witness and tell the story. Furthermore, I’m comfortable guessing that Jesus didn’t tell his disciples so they could write it down later. It feels too brag-y for that. These two factors decrease the likelihood that this is the telling of a story that happened, and increase the likelihood that the story is being told to make a point (or points?).

The story shows up in Mark and Matthew as well, with some changes, meaning that a bunch of people found it worthwhile. So, what value is there in telling a story of Jesus’ temptation? Let’s start by considering it’s location in Luke. The story of Jesus’ birth and childhood take up Luke 1 and 2.  Luke 3 mostly concerns John the Baptist – his ministry, teaching, and imprisonment – and then moves on to Jesus’ baptism and then Jesus’ genealogy. Then we get this story, which is followed by Jesus’ first teachings and then his first healing and THEN the call of the disciples. This story is really early, as if it is trying to clarify who Jesus is.

I found a few excellent theories on what is going on here. The Jesus seminar says, “Luke utilizes this story in the manner of a Greco-Roman biography: he has placed an ordeal story between an account of the hero’s remarkable birth and the beginning of his career, as a way of foreshadowing his life and destiny.”1 That seems fair, yet still leave me wondering why THIS story is the one chosen.

Alan Culpepper in the New Interpreter’s Bible comes up with a number of theories, I’m going to share only the ones I found enlightening. He suggests that for those who had been expecting a Messiah, there were significant questions about what kind of Messiah would come. Would the Messiah be a royal Messiah bringing back the kingdom of Israel? Would the Messiah be a priestly Messiah purifying the rituals of the Temple? This story clarifies that Jesus won’t misuse his power and isn’t going to do party tricks with his power either.  At the very least then, if he won’t misuse his power, he won’t be a bad king, and if he won’t do party trick with his power, he won’t be a bad priest.

It connects Jesus with the history of Israel (a theory we’ll return to) and gives the followers of Jesus a model for resisting temptation. Culpepper also offers an intriguing point about the gospel of John, which does not include this story. Instead, he suggests that there are stories in the Gospel of John that form a basis for Jesus being tempted and resisting temptation in each of these ways. Therefore, the Synoptic version is a condensed poetic expression of what to expect from Jesus.2

Amy Jill Levine in points out in The Jewish Annotated New Testament made extra clear the connections to the Hebrew Bible. First of all, having Jesus in the desert for 40 days “recalls Israel’s testing”.3 That I could have come up with on my own, but then she points out that it connects Jesus to Moses and Elijah. In Deuteronomy 9:9, Moses says, “When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water.” 1 Kings 19:8 speaks of Elijah, “He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.” Who knew that the Transfiguration was foreshadowed in Luke? (Not me.) Amy Jill Levine also helps with understanding the role of the Devil in this story. She says that Satan, in Jewish thought is a member of the heavenly court, his role is to test the righteous.”4 Now, this doesn’t FIX the story for me, nor does it make me comfortable talking about a personification of temptation, but it softens it enough to make it usable.

Let’s review. Basic theories as to why this story would be included in the Gospels: because Greco-Roman biographies included a story of testing, to clarify what kind of Messiah Jesus was, to show people how to resist temptation (although I’m not sure that quoting scripture really WORKS for this), to establish the trustability of Jesus, to connect Jesus to the history of Israel and Moses and Elijah. If a few of those are actually true, then the story seems to have sufficient reason to exist.

Now that we’re clear on that, I’d like to obsess over the first bit of the story – the temptation regarding bread. I’m still a little testy on this one. It helps a little bit to think of this story as Jesus’ vision quest, but I worry that Jesus simply didn’t have enough money to have enough excess fat on him to be able to survive so long in the desert without food. That is likely taking the story too literally though. More so, I’m concerned about the presentation of food as temptation, and the giving up of food as God-desired sacrifice.

Wandering for 40 days in the desert is certainly a way of recalling the desert wanderings of the people under the leadership of Moses – but they got manna to eat. Of course, both Moses and Elijah are said to go as long with out food, and I suspect the underlying point in both is that God will take care of them, just as the story of the manna in the desert is mean to imply. I am a bit distracted by the rocks that Jesus is said to be tempted to make into bread. I’m not sure why you’d start with rocks anyway, unless you were trying to connect the rocks to the ones that get mentioned in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem story. Remember? The crowds are cheering Jesus and, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:39-40) While in the beginning of his ministry Jesus shows constraint in his power, it seems like the Gospel suggests that there is an unstoppable growth in the power and energy that surrounds Jesus. Perhaps, in fact, it suggests that while Jesus self-constrains, following Jesus has an energy of its own! I’m not sure, but I think it is interesting.

The passage from Deuteronomy is, like all of Deuteronomy, attributed to Moses as a speech. I think it is one of the more profound passages of the Bible. Moses speaks of the future, to the people who are said to be standing outside the Promised Land looking into it with wonder. Moses will die before they enter. He says them, when you have come into the land and posses it, and settled into it… and all of the instructions we hear today are for that time, although they are spoken to people who are not yet in the land. Deuteronomy tends to conflate generations in meaningful ways, moving backward and forward in time through them.

When a generation came who had settled the land and brought forth fruit from it, they were then to take the first fruits of the land to a priest with a particular story of remembrance. I want you to hear it again,

“Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us. A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”

Do you hear all the generations? There is the one bringing the fruit, and the ones who lived with the promise of the land, but outside of it. There is a reference to Abraham, the wandering Aramean (and PLEASE remember that this reference to Abraham with today’s national borders would make him a Syrian refugee), the sons of Jacob who went to Egypt, and the many generations who lived there, the generation of the exodus, and the generation who settled the land. All of them interact in this retelling of the story, and the speaker is all of them at once. The best part though, is the conclusion. After the first fruits have been gathered, and taken to the priest in ritual, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.” The people are all to eat together in remembrance and celebration.

The generations who knew wealth and plenty remembered what it was to know hardship and hunger, and the celebration of having food becomes the invitation to those who don’t have food to share the bounty. It is a bit like our Community Breakfast, isn’t it? It is a bit like the gifts we give to the church, also.

I’m struck by the contrasting ideas of bread. Granted, the first fruits may not literally have been bread, but let’s assume some of them were grain that may or may not have been baked into bread. It would become bread eventually, so go with me. In Deuteronomy the bread is a blessing, one that moves a person to rituals of gratitude and celebrations of sharing. The bread becomes the reminder of the times without bread, and is thus both a blessing and a symbol of humility. In the Gospel the bread is a temptation, it is a symbol of weakness that the human body would desire food.  The comparative Hebrew Bible passages infer that food was unnecessary because of the presence and care of God, but the Gospel acknowledges Jesus’ hunger and need for food, but takes it as weakness. (And people wonder why I like the Hebrew Bible???) In this premise, where bread is temptation, Jesus is good because he doe not bending to the human need for nourishment. This is the same bread that is used in sacrament “This is my body” and in table fellowship, in the giving of the first fruits, and the sharing of the table with Levites and foreigners.

There are those who say that Jesus did well in resisting the temptation, because the temptation was to use his power for his own good. To them I reply: some of our power in life must be used for our own good, God would have it be that way. God does not want us to give away all of our life power and goodness. God calls for everyone to have a full and abundant life. Sometime a sacrifice is called for in order to care for the greater good, but there is no value in sacrificing what is wonderful JUST TO DO SO.

I’m going to assume instead that Jesus had been hungry in the desert long enough to be having delusions, and one of them was that a stone looked like bread. He responded to the delusion with a refusal to break his teeth on a stone, aware that his mind was playing tricks on him. I assume this because along with Deuteronomy and the Communion Table, I affirm that bread and food are good gifts from God with physical and symbolic value. When a person is hungry we are instructed to feed them. That includes ourselves. May we remember the wonder that comes with the food we eat, and the nourishment it gives us, and may we come to every table with gratitude for food and awareness calling us to feed those who are hungry. May we let go of the assumption that sacrifice is inherently good, and return to a sense of the holiness of every day items – including food. Amen

1Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 278.

2 R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994): 97-98.

3Amy Jill Levine “Notes on Luke” 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), 106.

4Ibid.

–

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

February 14, 2016

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