“Lillies of the Field” based on Joel 2:21-27 and Matthew…

November 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A few years ago, at a retreat entitled “Courage to Lead,” we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” We learned it in a very physical way. We were put in groups of threes, one person was to stand tall, and the other two knelt on the ground, holding onto the standing person’s hands. We tried it three ways. The first way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person fought it as hard as they could. The second way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person let them. The third way, however, was neither fighting nor giving in. In the third way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down and the person standing allowed the pulling – without fighting it nor giving in to. In that case, it felt like those pulling on my arms were helping me stretch. While I’d fallen both of the first two times, the third time it was pretty easy to stay on my feet. It felt like mountain pose in yoga – strong and steady.

The exercise, were told afterward, was really meant to be a metaphor about our choices in how we respond to others. We can look and listen with judgement and fight other as they tell their stories; we can receive other people’s stories without reflection or connection; OR we can allow another person’s story to be their truth and something that reflects truths in us. We can learn from and grow with another person, simply by listening to them, in the same way that other people pulling on me could feel like a stretch instead of like an attack. Soft eyes see, but see without to judging.

If I were to take a guess at what meaning is really at the core of the Gospel Lesson today, it would be the message of soft eyes. But to explain WHY, we need to start with Joel. That passage contains words of comfort and hope, of ease and restoration. But, if you listened carefully there is only one theme: a promise of enough food. The soil will rejoice, the animals will be able to eat green grass, the trees will bear fruit, the vines will yield grapes, the rain will come and let the crops grow – and it will come at the right times. The central promise is, verbatim, “”The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Or, in other words, “there will be enough food.” While there is plenty of metaphorical value in these words, I suspect their first meaning is quite literal.

Food, and food in abundance, in the ancient world, meant life. For the people trying to live after the exile, when what they had known was destroyed, the idea of a return to good life almost meant a vision of the land being able to be productive again. It meant a restoration of a stable, sustainable life. In some ways I find this passage shocking, when I realize that the whole dream of comfort and goodness is simply “you’ll be able to eat!” In fact, it says that the capacity to eat, and eat enough, is the reason that the people will trust in and praise God. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”

The idea here is that if you have food, God is with you, and if you don’t have food God isn’t. I don’t agree with this premise, but I CERTAINLY see how people could come to that conclusion. And, it helps us understand the oddities of our Gospel passage.

We need to look at the Gospel Lesson on its own first. I’m struck by the difference presented within the Gospel lesson between the natural world and human society. The examples of creatures whose well-being is cared for by God are from the natural world: birds, lilies, grasses. They’re complimented, they’re functional, they’re cared for. The birds don’t have to hoard food because they keep on finding enough. There is a subtle contrast with human societies that have the capacity grow and store food. There should be an abundance of food, yet the people are hungry.

The second natural example, it also ends up being a bit of a critique of human society. The lilies of the field don’t work for their lives, they don’t make cloth, “they neither toil nor spin.” Yet the epitome of wealth and wisdom in Jewish history – Solomon himself, wasn’t able to use all the wealth and all the knowledge he had to make himself as beautiful as those flowers who don’t work at it all, nor seek to acquire wealth. The lily is a regular symbol of beauty in the Bible. In Song of Songs the beloved is compared to a lily among brambles. When the Bible tells us of Solomon building the temple, (1 Kings 7), lilies were used to decorate the space. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like a lily, and he seemed to know it! He valued their beauty!

The final natural example in Matthew is that of the “grasses of the field.” I can hear in them the refrain from Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes has a lot to say about work, toil, food, and drink, including a fairly well known passage , “What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. [God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:9-13) It to me seems like Jesus may be continuing that conversation here!

What does it mean when workers toil, and yet do not have enough to eat and drink, to be clothed, or to take pleasure in life? What does it mean when people are stuck in the needs of the present and therefore can’t give any attention to the future? And what does it mean, in the midst of those challenges, to hear Jesus say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink , or about your body, what you will wear?”

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in “The Social-Science Comment on the Synoptic Gospels” point out that “For members of any culture (such as the United States), to have a future orientation requires that all one’s present needs be consistently taken care of. Such was never the experience of the preindustrial peasant.”¹ The people Jesus was in ministry with were people who usually did NOT have enough – they were people whose circumstances were dire. Most people did not have enough to eat, many people died earlier than they would have otherwise because of malnutrition.

It is a really weird thing to say “don’t worry about food” to people for whom staying alive means figuring out how to acquire enough bread “not to worry about food.” It seems like the equivalent of saying to a person who is homeless “not to worry about money.” But, I don’t think that Jesus is callous or unfeeling. So, while he is SAYING that, I don’t think it is likely to be his final point.

Thus, I wonder, WHY is Jesus telling people not to worry? Is the purpose of “don’t worry” really that you can’t change it anyway, so it isn’t worth the effort to worry? Or, is the purpose of “don’t worry” that anxiety is simply counter-productive? And/or is the purpose of “don’t worry” that moving out of the status quo and into creative solutions requires the letting go of fear and anxiety? Is Jesus telling people not to worry because worry keeps them from getting what they need???

I think so. ( I might hope so.) I think Jesus wanted the people to have enough to eat, but he thought the best way to make that happen was for them to work collaboratively, and being collaborative requires some letting go. Jesus is saying that worrying isn’t helping, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” He also says that worrying is the way of the world. He asks his followers to do something else entirely, to work for the kindom instead of working for the necessities of life.

This is where the soft eyes come back in. I think the people were working WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to survive. The common misconception of this passage would be the opposite of that – that people are to be entirely passive and wait for God to act on their behalf. But I think Jesus is really talking about a middle way. Jesus is telling the people not to worry, and not to be passive, but to work together for everyone’s good – with God.

As a reminder, he kindom is the goal of Christian faith. It is what we are working towards, and what we believe God is working towards in the world. It is a time and a place of abundance. Perhaps today it would make sense to think of it as staring with Joel’s vision of soil, water, trees, vines, and grains that produce enough for everyone to be satiated. But the vision actually goes further. It is not just food that is abundant and distributed so that all have enough, but also clothing and shelter, healthcare and human connection, meaning and purposeful work, comfort and hope. The kindom comes when we treat each other as beloved children of God, and work towards a world when all have enough to be satiated in all of our needs.

This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US, we remember a historical example of the sort of generosity that can build the kindom. The early European settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not learned enough to about this land to have food in abundance, but the Native Americans shared what they had to feed those who didn’t have enough. Because of the food they shared, that day and that winter, the colonists survived, and because they survived we remember their generosity on Thanksgiving.

There are other ways to respond. We are not stuck with only the choices of fighting for survival, or passively giving up. We are not stuck with the choices of listening to the 24 hour news cycle or simply staying in bed and ignoring the world. There are middle ways! One of the most powerful is gratitude. When we feel stuck, (and a lot of us feel stuck a lot of the time) we can notice what there is to be grateful for – and there is almost always a lot! It pulls us out of false binaries and into the complicated possibilities of life – gratitude works to soften our eyes and let God and humanity in. Thanks be. Amen!

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Matthew 6:19-7:6” p. 50.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 18, 2018

“Unbound for Living” based on Psalm 24 and John…

November 11, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I took a course on Children’s Literature in college. It was one of those courses where the professor was so worried about people thinking it wasn’t a valid topic of study that it was 3 times harder than everything else. Despite its difficultly, the course was amazing. During one of his lectures, causally, as if we’d all already known it, the professor mentioned that all fairy tales deal with two fundamental desires of all humans: to be special and to be normal.¹

To be special and to be normal. He used examples to show it off, but the point itself stuck with me. We all want to be normal – to fit in, to be accepted, to be assured that we’re OK. We also want to be special – to be great at something, to be recognized for our talents, to be seen as extraordinary. The balance and struggle between the two changes in various groups and between individuals. In some communities, the normal is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people living in poverty). In others, the special is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people who are upper middle class and upper class.)²

To be special and to be normal. Sometimes those two universal yearnings come into conflict with each other, because they are. Yet, sometimes they play together as well. Sometimes we subdivide ourselves into various groups – based on something that makes us “special” – and then have expectations in that group of what looks like “normal.” The internet has been very useful for this, since it makes connecting with others who might share traits so much easier. Take, for example, the myriad of pseudo-physicological “personality tests” and the ways that people subgroup themselves into types and then explain their behaivors as normal within those types. (Admittedly, this can be fun.)

In the beginning of the Gospel reading today, Jesus is as normal as normal can be. His friend has died, and he weeps. He grieves. Jesus values the life and love of one he has known and feels the emptiness when the life has passed. This is a story of Jesus acting like a normal person. He was holding it together until Mary wept, but his emotions were impacted y hers. In the midst of the grief he wants to go, and see, to process, to be as close as possible to the one he has lost. And even in the story an accusation of blame. In this case it is external – Mary blames Jesus for Lazarus’s death, but often it is internal. One of the great struggles of grief is the struggle with blame. Because we wish we had the power to hold onto our loved ones, because death hurts like nothing else, because we want to think we could have stopped it, intermingled with grief is a lot of blame; and often much of it is internalized.

It is all normal.

Until it isn’t.

The story shifts to one about Jesus as special – REALLY special – to the best of my knowledge there are no internet chat groups for those who can resuscitate the dead with a word. Jesus commands that the stone be rolled way, and he calls the dead man back out among the living. As the man struggles to move because of the binding clothes of death he’d been wrapped in, Jesus gives a final command “Unbind him and let him go.”

If there is anything “normal” in this story, it is that Jesus is able to do what the rest of us yearn for. The yearning to call back our loved ones from the dead, to return them to the space of the living, to unbind the bands of death that hold them – that’s one of the MOST normal experiences of humanity.

So, this might be a story of human grief, what it looks like and what it yearns for. Jesus is the epitome of human grief, and the expression of what we’d do if we could, under the assumption that he could do what we can’t. Therein lies the special and the normal!

Theologians differentiate between the story of the rising of Lazarus from the rising of Jesus by calling Lazarus’s resuscitation and Jesus’ resurrection. The difference, they say, is that Lazarus was going to die again someday, but Jesus was not. Some say this story exists merely to foreshadow Jesus’ resurrection, or to indicate his power over death. Yet, in this story this power over death is impermanent. Lazarus will die again. The power over death in this story then, is transient.

And yet, that doesn’t matter! For Mary and Martha, as well as for Jesus, another moment with Lazarus was worth it. Whatever moments they’d gained – no matter how many moments they gained – were infinite worth. In reflecting on the yearning for more time with those we love, we are given reminders of where to set our current priorities. Mary, Martha, and even Jesus would take what time they could get and savor it, without complaining that Lazarus’s life would still someday end. Because the saints we celebrate today are ones who no longer walk among the living, we are reminded of the power of time with our loved ones. We cannot regain time with those we’ve lost; but we can prioritize time with those who are still with us. We cannot go back and learn the stories we never heard from those we’ve lost; but we can ask new questions and listen to the stories of those who are still with us.

There is another lesson given to us by the saints who have gone on ahead – they’ve taught us how to live! In every human life we see a unique glimpse of the divine, and we see a reflection of God’s love. Within the lives we celebrate today there are lessons about how to live a good life.

The story says there were cloth bindings covering Lazarus’s hands, feet, and head. He emerged from the grave still laden with them. Maybe he couldn’t take them off himself because his hands were covered. Perhaps he was still stiff and struggling to regain feeling in his extremities? Maybe he needed help taking them off, or maybe those who loved him needed to experience helping him remove the bindings as a means of unbinding him from death.

“Unbind him from the death cloths” is a powerful image. In this story it is about freeing a living man who was thought to be dead, to free him to be alive and mobile again. Those who were living removed the cloths of death, to allow the one assumed to be dead to be fully among the living again. Those binding cloths of death have resonance in our lives too. They lead us to questions.

What binds us to death, and prevents us from a full entry into to life? Can we become bound to death while we are grieving the death of those we love? Does fear, or even existential anxiety, ironically bind us to death? Can some levels of exhaustion bind us to death? Can the harms we’ve know, and the healing we have yet to find, be a binding to death?

What is it like to be among those who unbind the living from the cloths of death? How does it feel to unravel hands so they can move again, feet so one can walk without tripping, a face to allow clean air to be breathed, eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to speak? When have we offered such miraculous gifts? Does it happen when we offer food to people who are hungry? Is it a gift that occurs when we have time to listen to another’s heart? Are these the gifts of medicine and engineering, of teaching caregiving? Are we able to unbind each other? Can we give each other rest? Hope? Healing?

How?

How do we identify when we need help becoming unbound from the things of death? What does it feel like to be in need of help to have the cloths be unraveled? Jesus calls us both to unbind the clothes of death – and to let the cloths of death be unbound form us.

We get to grieve – Jesus modeled grief for us. But we also get to live – and take the lessons we learned from those we loved about how to live, and live well. We remember, on this day, the saints who have gone before us. We remember their lives with gratitude. Because of them we remember to live our lives well, and to savor the time we have with those we love. Today, we thank God for the lives of the saints. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Randy-Michael Testa, lecture, Winter Term 2001.

2Based on research by Nicole Stephens, Kellogg School of Management.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 1, 2018

“What Had He Heard?”based on Job 38:1-7 and Mark 10:46-52

October 29, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m told that there are preachers in the world who can speak without putting the readings in context. I am not that preacher. This is my third sermon in a row on texts from Mark 10, and I’m aware of how profoundly this gospel reading exists within its context in Mark.

I recognize the risk of boring people to death, and yet I find that we need to look both backwards and forwards in Mark form this text in order to make any sense of it. #sorrynotsorry Two weeks ago we dealt with the story of the rich man who asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He was invited by Jesus to sell all he had and follow Jesus, but he went away sorrowful because “he had many possessions.” Jesus then taught his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

Last week, we heard about the disciples James and John who asked a favor of Jesus. Jesus responded, “What would you have me do?” The disciples were looking for security and power, Jesus corrected them by teaching that he wasn’t offering security, nor power. Instead, he was offering a radical way off life where the first become last, the last become first, and those who are leaders are servants first.

As soon as today’s reading is over, the Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem begins.

Crowded in the midst of these teachings and misunderstandings, we have this obscure little healing narrative. It is all happening on the way to Jerusalem, which in Mark is the way to death on the cross. It would be easy to overlook this healing narrative, especially since Jesus just healed another blind man in Mark 8, and that was a far more interesting story. It is the one where Jesus’ healing takes two tries. But here it is, our text for the week, and the more I looked at it context, the more brilliant it started to appear.

The rich man couldn’t bear to sell all he had, yet in this story an impoverished beggar throws off his cloak in order to get up faster to get to Jesus. The cloak was not only his only possession, it was likely his home. His cloak was what kept him warm enough to stay alive at night, and it was also a tool. Beggars spread out their cloaks to receive alms.¹ Yet, in his haste to get to Jesus, he discards it. The rich man couldn’t let go when he was asked to, but the poor man throws away everything he has in one single motion simply to meet Jesus.

The disciples James and John had approached Jesus to gain a favor, and tried to trick him by opening with “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus had responded, “What is it you want me to do for you?” Here, Jesus begins the interaction with the blind man who had been begging with almost the same words. “What do you want me to do for you?” While the established disciples had been seeking status, despite Jesus’ teaching; Bartimaeus requests healing. He says he wants to see again. Jesus isn’t about status, but he is about wholeness.

We sometimes miss the nuances in the healing stories in the Bible because our worldview and the worldview of the ancients are so different, including the fact that they didn’t have germ theory yet. Bruce Malina in the Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels says, “Anthropologists carefully distinguish between disease (a biomedical malfunction afflicting and organism) and illness (a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost). Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one.”² Ancient healers, including Jesus, were working on ILLNESS. Malina says, “the healing process is considered directly related to a person’s solidarity with and loyalty to the overall belief system of the culture in general.”³

So ancient healing was, in effect, a healing of both the individual and the community. The individual who was ill was separated from the community by the illness, and thus the illness impacted the community as well, since they were separated as well. A community is only whole when all of its members are present and connected.

Bartimaeus’s blindness would not be a considered a disease today, nor a reason for him to be outside of community, but I think it was then. This is where the gospel gets a bit confusing. The gospel says that Bartimaeus regained his sight when Jesus spoke. In the act of healing him, Jesus says, “Go, your faith has made you well.” This indicates that the healing of sight was seen as the healing of illness. It also fits with the other healing stories in Mark. The people are to “go,” to leave the live of illness behind and re-enter society. Sometimes they’re even told to go to the priests to be assured of their healing. However, Bartimaeus does not “go.” He does not return to his community. This healing is, sort of, cut off then. It isn’t complete. Instead of returning to the community, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way.

In essence, this healing story is ALSO the LAST story of Jesus calling his disciples. After this, the story starts to move towards his death. This is a transition point, in function it is the end of his active ministry. Everything changes with the entrance into Jerusalem, and that begins with the verse that follows this story.

The first disciples were called away from their fishing boats. Even at this late point, they’re still very confused about what’s going on. This final disciple though, isn’t told to follow at all. He’s told to “go” not to “come” and he follows anyway. We give the first disciples a lot of credit for following Jesus when he said “come” – do we give enough for the one who followed when he was told “go”?

As a whole, this story is a fantastic example of Mark’s earlier point about “the first being last and the last being first.” The first disciples are still struggling to understand, the last disciple is the one yelling “Jesus, son of David” – and he is the FIRST person in Mark to make that claim about Jesus. To call Jesus son of David was to claim him as Messiah.

I struggle though, to make sense of the healing that didn’t restore community. Maybe I’m not supposed to worry about it because it restored the kindom community around Jesus instead of the community of Jericho? I’m not sure.

I’m also worried about the rest of the beggars in Jericho. You see, as Ched Myers says in Binding the Strong Man, “Jericho was the last stop en route to the city of David; the road out of town, representing the final, fifteen-mile leg of the pilgrim’s journey, would have been the standard beat for much of that city’s beggar population. The odds were good that the pilgrims would have the mood and means to give alms.”⁴ Which is to say that Bartimaeus was likely not was the only beggar on the route – nor even in the vicinity when this healing was happening. The setting means there were a lot of beggars, and Bartimaeus was just one of them.

Why was he chosen? Why did Jesus call for him? Was Bartimaeus the only one crying out? Was he the only one crying out “Jesus, son of David”? If so, was this the first time he’d used a line like that, or did he try some variation of it every day? If it was the first time, what had he heard about Jesus leading him to believe he was the “son of David?” Or, was he the one who needed it the most? Was he the one the crowd spent the most energy silencing (and if so, why)? Was he the squeaking wheel – and that got Jesus’ attention? Or was everyone crying out too?

It is hard for me to hear a story of Jesus picking one suffering person out of a crowd and healing only that one. While it is an unexpected grace for that one person, if Jesus could heal, why did he stop with one?

My struggles with the Bartimaeus story also extend to the Job narrative. Our reading today is well into the book of Job, so I’m going to do a quick plot summary to catch us all up. Job was a wealthy man with a great life, and then it all came crashing down – his herd died, his tents collapsed, his children died, and he got sick all at once. He felt like this was a punishment from God, and an unjust one, because he hadn’t done anything wrong. His friends tried to tell him to repent, and he refused because he hadn’t done anything wrong. He asked God to explain God’s self. 38 chapters into this drama, in the passage we read this morning, God finally does.

It isn’t the answer Job was looking for – Job wanted to ask questions of God and make God answer them! Instead Job got questioned by God. Experientially, that sounds like God. The answer responds to the person’s need, but not their wants! God’s response could be heard as “who are you, and what do you think you know?” It could be heard in other ways too, “there is a whole creation here, it isn’t all about you”, or “things are more complicated than you can see” or “there is a lot of wonder, even in the midst of the horrors.” God’s answer is complicated, and I think our own moods impact what we hear it in.

But, I think the key piece of the story is that God ANSWERS. Job isn’t left to his suffering alone, and God cares. Yet, I have known people whose life experiences feel like Job. They’re at rock bottom and they’ve lost everything, and most of them don’t have an experience of noticing that God is listening or responding when they are at the bottom. Thanks be, some do! But most don’t.

Sure, Job is a story expressing a lot of theological questions. But it is also a narrative telling us that God cares, and God responds. Yet, people don’t always sense that in their own lives. It can feel like the problem of Bartimaeus, YAY for his healing, what about everyone else. YAY for Job’s answer, where is mine?

Or maybe I’m unfair. When, bad things happen to people and I don’t think those are punishments from God. I think they are things that happened, and God is with us to help us through it. So, then, why am I worried about GOOD things happening to people? Yes, some people get healed, and others don’t! There are reasons to be grateful for healings, and for spiritual insights, and for experiences of the Divine.

Maybe, it needs to be said that things aren’t always fair, including the distribution of blessings. I would like them to be fair! But I can hear God suggesting I gird up my loins and get over it. Sometimes blessings come and the last become first. But only sometimes. In any case, in this story, Jesus is still heading to Jerusalem, Bartimaeus follows Jesus to Jerusalem, Job’s life goes on. Our faith doesn’t let us be dependent on miracles, they may or may not come. But they are not indications of God’s love. God’s love is there all the time, equally distributed, fair, accessible, transformational. We can depend on God’s love, and let God’s blessings be bonuses. I think that’s all we can do. May God help us. Amen

1Myers, 282.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 368.

3 Malina, 369.

4Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008) page 281.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

“Twisting Expectations” based on Isaiah 40:3-5 and Mark 10:32-45

October 21, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

James
and John don’t get it – they’ve managed to miss the whole point.
Further, in the remaining 10 disciples’ responses to James and John,
we learn that they don’t get it either. They’ve ALL missed the
point. In the Gospel of Mark, the closest followers of Jesus, the 12
disciples, are absolutely clueless about … well, everything. Jesus
and the disciples are talking past each other. I think it is meant
to be amusing. It might be a little bit more successful in aiming
for amusing, however, if it didn’t feel so very close to home.

James
and John are scared, and as scared people do, they are seeking
security. They were on their way to Jerusalem, they had some sense
of what might be coming, and it was terrifying. Scared people often
behave in suboptimal ways. This fact feels relevant TODAY. Michael
Moore’s 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” discussed our nation’s
“climate of fear.” He claims we’re taught to be afraid, and to
seek solutions to our fear, even when the reasons we’re to be scared
aren’t articulated. His movie was the first time I’d noticed that
phenomenon, and it was very helpful in insulating me from its effects
– for a while.

Then
it gotten harder. The recent news on climate change is terrifying,
and I think even validly so. In recent years I have been forced to
reckon with the fact that the values I hold most dear, the ways I
think the common good is achieved, and the society I wish to be a
part of building are NOT as widely shared as I thought, and that has
been scary too. Maybe it is only scary to know it – since it was
already there before, but it has been scary nonetheless. While this
has been normal in my life time, it also scares me that the United
Methodist Church at large and each individual UM church I have loved
will someday cease to exist and that day will likely be sooner than I
would choose.

These
large scale things exist on top of the normal day to day fears of
human existence: that one day I will die, that one day all those I
love will die, that illness or injury could come at any moment to
myself or those I love, that among those I care most deeply about
there are ones struggling because they don’t have enough, that a day
could come when I don’t have enough, that maybe nothing I do matters,
and universal fear that no one really likes me after all.

I
don’t think those fears are unique to me, but they also exist in me.
The normal day to day fears also existed back in Jesus day, and James
and John were likely quite familiar with those. They were also
facing some large scale concerns – they might lose Jesus, and the
Roman Empire might be interested in eliminating their whole
community.

At
the same time, they clearly believed that Jesus was going to “win.”
I say that because of how they respond to their fear. They’re
afraid everything is going to get destroyed, so they try to seek
power within the system as they understand it – and by doing so
they display just how much they believe that Jesus is the source of
power. They ask to sit at his right and and his left. We, the
reader, are supposed to be thinking of the insurrectionists who will
be crucified on Jesus right and left. However, the brothers are not.
They lived in an honor-shame society, the ultimate hierarchical
system. Honor was a zero sum game. They thought Jesus had it, and
they were trying to gain more honor by getting closer to him and
acknowledged by him.

However,
because it was a zero sum game, IF two members of the inner circle of
12 gained honor, then it meant the other 10 got moved further away
and lost honor. The other disciples seemed to believe as James and
John did: that things were scary, that this was a time to try to gain
security, that Jesus was the best bet they had, and that Jesus was so
honor-filled that the closer they got to him the better they’d do.

It
seems to me that they DID have the faith of a mustard seed, they just
didn’t have it in the right thing. While the disciples, led by James
and John, are vying for honor in a zero sum game that permeated their
society, Jesus is talking about an entirely different system. They
ask for a favor, and Jesus says, “You don’t get it. I’m not the
honor-source you think I am. I’m here to upend the system, not to
best it. Are you able to pay the price for upending the system with
me?”

This
is one of those places where people are talking past each other. I
appreciated the scholar who pointed out, “In the Old Testament ‘the
cup’ is an ambiguous image, which can connote joy and salvation (Pss.
23:5; 116:13) or woe and suffering (Ps. 11:6; Isa. 51:17, 22).”¹
The same scholar points out that there are reasons to think of
baptism as suffering or as blessing, as well. Jesus seems to be
talking suffering, but the disciples, still hearing things in the
ways of the world around them, hear their honored leader as talking
about blessing.

After
the remaining 10 disciples proof they’re missing the point too, Jesus
makes another attempt to do general teaching. What he speaks seems
to me to be central to Christian faith itself. “You
know that among those-who-don’t-know-our-God, those whom they
recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to
become great among you must be your servant,
and
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” In the
honor-shame system, servants and slaves were at the bottom. But
Jesus is twisting up all expectations, and putting servants and
slaves at the top.

He
finishes this teaching saying, “For the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” This
gets interesting. Charles Campbell, professor of Homiletics at Duke
Divinity School says:

“The
Way of the Cross, Jesus affirms, is the way of resistance of the
Domination System, which is characterized by power exercised over
others, by control by
others, by ranking as the primary principle of social organization,
by hierarchies of domination and subordination, winners and losers,
insiders and outsiders, honored and shamed. … Jesus calls the
community of faith, in its life together, to offer an alternative to
the ways of the Domination System – and to bear the suffering that
inevitably comes as a result. Jesus resists the domination system
throughout his ministry – even unto death on a cross – so he sets
us free (ransoms us, v. 45) from that system, so we might become
faithful disciples and take up his way of resistance.”²

Ched
Myers, author of Binding
the Strong Man
expands on the final point. He explains, “The term referred to the
price required to redeem captives or purchase freedom for indentured
servants. Jesus promises then that the way of ‘servanthood’ has been
transformed by the Human One into the way of transformation.”³
In this model, instead of leadership being about gaining power
over, leaders are being trained in the ways of nonviolence, to serve,
to resist, and if necessary, to suffer as well. Leaders aren’t
people who have, gain, or seek status, at least not as Jesus saw it.
That’s how the world works – how it worked then and how it works
now. Jesus presents an entirely different system: servant ministry,
taking care of each other.

By
lifting up the role of servant, Jesus inverted the entire hierarchy.
Furthermore, he established an expectation that his community of
followers would teach each other as extended kin, and as people
caring for the needs of each other. In the old system servant did
the care giving work, but in Jesus’ system, everyone did. The
followers of Jesus weren’t to be in competition with each other, they
weren’t in a zero sum game. They were to live by entirely
different rules.

They
were to LIVE the imagery of Isaiah. They were to become the
preparation for God’s way. They were the ones lifting up the lowly,
AND pulling down the mighty, to be in equal relationships with each
other! The followers of Jesus were to BE the glory of God revealed
in the world, visible for all.

Just
like the disciples though, we don’t do our best work when we’re
scared. I was reminded recently that the limbic system, which is
where our emotions live in our brains, is soothed relationally and
interpersonally. It is MUCH easier to feel good when we’ve connected
with those we love and trust then it is to talk or work our way out
of our fears by ourselves.

This
idea of radical equality with each other, of deep relationship, of
kinship without competition – this is really key. It isn’t just
for the long term well being of the sake of the kindom. It is ALSO
how we make it through the day to day, and how God helps us overcome
our fears and enact our roles as part of the glory of God. We
baptized Anna today, and we welcomed her as our sibling in Christ.
Now we teach her what it is to be loved in a radical community of
faith committed to twisting the world’s expectations into something
far better – the glory of God. May we do it well! Amen

1C.
Clifton Black, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
191

2Charles
L. Campbell “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” iin
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),
193.

3Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008), 279.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

October 21, 2018

“Jesus Looked and Loved” based on Leviticus 19:9-18 and…

October 15, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This is a tough gospel lesson. It is tough to understand, and it is tough to follow. Commentators I’ve read this week have varied wildly in their interpretations of the text, and in their suggestions about how to preach it. Since the text claims it is difficult to get into the kindom of God, it could seem like an odd passage for a baptism Sunday, when we celebrate inclusion in the Body of Christ and the shared work of building the kindom of God. I think it is going to work out for us in the end though.

I want to review a few points about the text before looking at it more broadly. The Christian tradition has often referred to the questioner in this passage as the “rich, young ruler” which is a conflation of the three versions from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark doesn’t tell us the man was young, nor a ruler, and he doesn’t INTRODUCE him as rich. We do find out that he is along the way though. As Ched Myers points out in Binding the Strong Man, “A possession is used to describe a piece of landed property of any kind… a farm or a field, and in the plural lands or estates.”¹ This puts him in the top 3% of wealth in the ancient world, and likely actually the top 1%.

The big interpretative question of this text is: is it good or bad to be wealthy? Or, more specifically – did the people to whom Jesus was speaking think it was good or bad to be wealthy? As John Dominic Crossan pointed out when he was here last fall, there are two streams of thought in the Bible. One is the “covenant” stream, in which God and the people make a deal and IF the people follow what they’re supposed to do THEN God will bless them with peace and prosperity. If not, God will punish them. The second stream, and it may be good to know that John Dominic Crossan thinks these streams are about the same size, is the stream of Sabbath and distributive justice. In this stream, God does not engage in reward nor punishment, although there remain natural consequences for actions. In this stream, human beings are responsible for their actions – and for taking care of each other. God is, at all times, encouraging resource distribution that maximizes abundant life.

John Dominic Crossan says that the stream of thought you follow in the Hebrew Bible impacts how you hear the New Testament. This seems especially true of how this passage gets interpreted. One school of thought thinks that the people Jesus were speaking to would have thought that wealthy people were wealthy because they were blessed by God, thus the disciples would have worried, “if the rich man can’t get in, the rest of us have no hope!” In this perspective, the end of the passage makes sense. If someone is asked to leave wealth, they’ll be given more of it later to make up for it.

Sakari Häkkinen, Department of New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa, helps us with context, “In the ancient world, generosity was directed rather to community, not to the needy, who were rather despised more than pitied.”² and “Those who had no problems with sustenance were altogether at most 10%, whereas in continuous problems of sustenance were living some 90% of the population, more than two thirds of them in severe or extreme poverty.”³

The other school of thought assumes the opposite. It assumes that because wealth was concentrated in the hands of very few, the poor resented them for it. Those who explain this mindset point out that there were a lot of zero sum assumptions at that time. Ancient Palestine and Galilee were part of an honor society, in which it was assumed that honor belonged to families, and if it was lowered – then someone else gained; and if it was raised, then someone else lost it. Thus, they say that people thought that way about wealth too. Ched Myers says,

As we have seen in the discussion of the class structure of Mark’s Palestine, landowners represented the most politically powerful social stratum. With this revelation, the story of the man abruptly finishes, as if the point is obvious. As far as Mark is concerned, the man’s wealth has been gained by ‘defrauding’ the poor – he was not ‘blameless’ at all – for which he might make restitution. For Mark, the law is kept only through concrete acts of justice, not the facade of piety.⁴

Bruce Malina in the Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels says, “In a limited-good society, compliments indicate aggression; they implicitly accuse a person of rising about the rest of one’s fellows at their expense.”⁵ And, compliments came with expectation of reciprocity. That’s why, he says, Jesus got snarky about not being good, he didn’t want the compliment, nor did he want to return one. Malina says , “To follow the discussion here, one must realize that ‘rich’ people were automatically considered thieves or heirs of thieves since all good things in life are limited. The only way one could get ahead was to take advantage of others.”⁶ Yet, it is important to note that a loss of wealth would be a loss of social status, and that would be a loss of HONOR, which would be the ultimate loss in that society.

Those in this view have a good way to make sense of the commandment that Jesus ADDED to his list that otherwise only included ones from the 10 commandments. Did you notice it? He says, “You shall not defraud.” Malina explains, “In the Greek Bible, the verb is appropriated to the act of keeping back the wages of a hireling, whereas in Classical Greek it is used of refusing to return goods or money deposited with another for safekeeping.⁷

I have to admit, I’m not sure which school of thought makes more sense to me. Sure, wealth was unevenly distributed, and those paying attention would have been furious about it. Further, I think Jesus was paying attention, and I think he followed the distributive justice stream. But I don’t know how the peasants in Galilee thought about wealth. It seems plausible to me that they thought the wealthy were blessed by God. It also seems plausible to me that their faith in God helped them see otherwise – if they followed the distributive justice stream. In fact, if I’m really honest, I think the people who listened to Jesus fell into both camps! Likely, not everyone heard it the same way. Likely not everyone who wrote about Jesus’ teaching thought about it in the same way.

Yet, the passage draws us into some really good questions. Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” I believe that he is talking about God’s realm on earth, and not about afterlife. And, I think maybe he is right. While I think the whole point of Christianity is to build the kindom of God, I also think there are a lot of thing that make it hard to make a 100% commitment to it, to live it, to ENTER it. One of those things has always been wealth. The kindom is a cooperative realm- where there is a distribution of justice AND of resources. Thus, anyone who has wealth and hasn’t shared it isn’t entirely living the kindom.

But monetary wealth isn’t the only facet of kindom living. The kindom is a place, a time, of abundance, which means it also requires giving of our energies, our talents, our passions. Further, I believe the kindom is built on healing and wholeness, not to mention authenticity! So, the things that hold us back from fully sharing ourselves, and our passions, and our talents – those hold back the kindom too. And that gives us all challenges to work on. Ultimately, as Methodists following John Wesley, we claim sanctification. That is, we claim that God is working within us to perfect our capacity to love others as God does. What direction is God working with you on right now? How is sanctification happening within you? Sanctification is the building of the kindom. And without releasing the things that hold us back from loving God, ourselves, AND others as God loves us all – we’re holding things that are too big to allow us FULLY enter the kindom. May God help us let go. Amen

1Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, 274. He is quoting Taylor, 1963: 430.

2Sakari Häkkinen, “Poverty in the first-century Galilee” in SciElo South Africa On-line version ISSN 2072-8050http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000400046 Accessed 10/13/18

3Ibid.

4Myers, 274.

5Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 191.

6Malina, 191.

7Myers quoting Taylor, page 272 of Myers, 428 of Taylor.

–

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 14, 2018

“Come, Weary People, and Rest” based on 1 Corinthians 11:23-26…

October 7, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I adore World Communion Sunday. It fills my head with images of tables, laden with the communion elements, the tables change shape, size, structure, and composition as they are set around the world. I love the idea that people in so many varied parts of the Body of Christ share together today – Roman Catholics and many different Orthodox traditions, along with the mainline Protestant denominations and many who are unaffiliated. I love the diversity people with varieties of of ages, races, ethnicities, languages, sexual orientations, gender identities, and abilities that will fill the tables. I just love that God’s table is found in so many forms, feeding so many people.

I love that we get to be a part of it, and that it extends our table into places we’ve never even been. Honestly, I get misty-eyed as well as mystical about this. The communion table has an inherent timelessness about it, when we remember one meal from 2000 years ago, but it also connects us to the many remembrances of that meal from the intervening 2000 years, and are reminded that our meals at God’s table become a part of this long history that will be in the shared tradition long after our lives have passed.

World Communion takes us around the world, and backwards and forwards in time, connecting us as the Body of Christ, feeding us so we can be healed and whole for the work of building the kindom of God.

With all that being said, my brain isn’t super good at generic. I can’t manage to feel connected to all the peoples of the world all at once, much less all the people who ever have or ever will live. So, I have encourage us to pick one part of the world, to truly hear and connect to the people of that place, as a way of expanding outward from our table into the world. Therefore, please indulge me in a history lesson. I promise it does connect, but it isn’t short.

This year, we’re intentionally expanding our table to Puerto Rico, a part of the United States, with a Methodist Church that became autonomous from the United Methodist Church in 1992. Until that point, the then United Methodists in Puerto Rico were considered part of the Northeastern Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church. Our sibling in Christ relationship with Christians in Puerto Rico is a tighter bond than with much of the rest of the world, and yet, it feels entirely deserving of our attention.

To get my head and heart aligned with Puerto Rico, I did some basic research on Puerto Rico’s history, and I’d like to share it with you. Because, until we know a person or a people’s story, we can’t really be in solidarity with them.

It is believed that Puerto Rico was first settled about 1000 years ago by people who called themselves Taíno and called the island Borikén.^¹ There were about 30,000 people living on the island when Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1493. He claimed it for Spain, named it San Juan Bautista, and left 2 days later, ^²thus making it one of the world’s oldest colonies. The colonization was passive for 15 years, but in 1508 the Spanish started building a military base and began forced labor of the indigenous people. By the 1530 census, only 1148 Taíno people still lived.^³

In order to maintain the island as a military and economic force, the Spaniards intentionally brought Africans to the Island as slaves starting in 1513, and slavery continued for 360 years until 1873.^⁴ The population was rebuilt by immigration from Spain and forced migration of people from other West Indies islands.

In 1898 the United States annexed the colony from Spain. The island’s economy was dominated by a considerable wealth-generating plantation system, cultivating sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee.”^⁵ The US mainland mostly wanted it for a military base, but it took the economic benefits as well. Because of pressure exerted by Puerto Ricans on the island, they became US citizens in 1917, and Puerto Rico became a U.S. commonwealth in 1952, although many argue it is still functionally a colony.^⁶ Debates are still prominent over whether Puerto Ricans want to maintain its status quo, become a state, or become independent.

There was a large increase in manufacturing in the late 1970s and 1980s because of a intention, effective, tax loophole. Then, in 1996 Congress, without representation from Puerto Rico and against their desire, acted to close the loophole. Rolling Stone Magazine summarizes,

“The pharmaceutical companies fled. The economy tanked. Tax revenues collapsed. In May 2006, much of the government, including all the public schools, was temporarily shut down. But rather than cut spending to make up for lost tax revenue, the Puerto Rican government went the other way. It started borrowing money. Two years later, when the global financial crisis hit, it borrowed even more. Broke and desperate, it turned to high-risk capital appreciation bonds and other financial instruments with astronomical interest rates. A 2016 report on Puerto Rico’s debt describes these loans as “the municipal version of a payday loan…. Instead of jump-starting the economy, it pushed the island deeper into joblessness, recession and bankruptcy. In 2015, then-Gov. Alejandro García Padilla warned that the debt was not payable.’… A consequence of this decade-long financial decline was little investment in infrastructure — the roads, highways, bridges, water and sewage systems, and electric grid were all more or less abandoned.”^⁷

The attempt to pull Puerto Rico out of debt felt to many like a return to deeper colonization. The U.S. Congress created the economic collapse, and Congress rejected repeated requests for economic help, choosing the economic interests of Puerto Rico’s creditors over the human interests of the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico themselves. As a result, last year before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had 3.3 million citizens, the poverty rate was 43.5% and more than 10 percent of the workforce was unemployed.^⁸Then came Hurricane Maria. National Geographic describes the status of the island after the 155 mile per hour winds had come:

“The result was the longest major power outage in U.S. history, and many communities on the island were left without running water for months. Toilets couldn’t flush; there was no water for showers, baths, or washing clothes. People had to rely on bottled water, but supplies were limited. Useless electric stoves had to be replaced with propane ones. Without refrigeration, food rotted and vital medicines spoiled. Only those with gas-powered generators could ward off darkness after dusk—for a few brief hours. Forget about air conditioners to relieve the sweltering heat. All the modern conveniences we take for granted were left behind.”^⁹

Rolling Stone summarizes the impact in a different vein:

“Hurricane Maria was the third-costliest storm in U.S. history. It damaged or destroyed more than 300,000 homes, left 3 million people without power and caused about $100 billion in damage. … It’s also powerful and tragic evidence that climate change will hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest. … Three months after the storm, 1.5 million people were still without power. It took nearly a year for electricity to be restored on the island, making it the second-largest blackout in history. It contributed to thousands of deaths because of everything from failed air-conditioning systems to hospitals that couldn’t power dialysis machines.“^¹⁰

The Puerto Rican government has now adopted the figure of 2,975 dead based on recent studies that have calculated not only the number that died during the immediate devastation of the hurricane but also those who died in the 6 months that followed, the “excess” deaths above those over the same period during the previous year. This method of calculation accounts for the people who died as a result of the hurricane’s devastation of the island and its services over and above those who died of natural causes.^¹¹

The devastation isn’t over yet. The failing infrastructure from before the storm didn’t just make it hard to fix it. FEMA rules says you can’t use its funds to build better than what you had before! Thus most of the rebuilding that can be done with relief funds will not improve matters and will not be able to create infrastructure that will be sustainable against the next storms. In the midst of this, all those small-scale coffee farmers in rural areas have been forced to abandon their land entirely, knowing that no help is going to come.

I believe it is to Puerto Rico, and others in the world whose circumstances are similar, that Jesus’ words in the gospel are aimed. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The burden has been SO heavy for SO long, and the end is not in sight. People continue to walk by faith, not by sight. People rebuild by faith, and not by sight. The people of God in Puerto Rico need a lightened load, and a good, long rest.

It may be that some of us might be able to lighten that load. Some of us may still have energy to call or write to our representatives to ask them to do all that they can to help the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico. Some of us may be able to donate to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, better known as UMCOR, which continues to be present in Puerto Rico assisting in the long-term rebuilding efforts. UMCOR doesn’t have restrictions on rebuilding better! We can pray for the people of Puerto Rico. We can reach out to the Puerto Ricans we know – those who live on the Island and those who live on the mainland – and check to see how they and their loved ones are doing. Some are feeling lost or forgotten. There may also be creative ways that we can help lighten the burden of our siblings in Christ in Puerto Rico.

Today, our table extends from Schenectady, NY to Puerto Rico – to San Juan and to the rural farmlands. Our table is one of feeding the hungry, of uplifting souls, of giving thanks even in brokenness, of unity in the Body of Christ. May this holy day be a day of connection, a day of rest, a day of laying down heavy burdens, and a day of shared yokes. Amen

1Russell Schimmer, Yale University Genocide Studies Program, “Puerto Rico”https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/puerto-rico, accessed 10/4/18

2Schimmer.

3Schimmer

4Schimmer

5Schimmer

6Smithsonian “Puerto Rico – History and Heritage”https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/puerto-rico-history-and-heritage-13990189/written November 6, 2007, accessed 10/6/18.

7Jeff Goodell “The Perfect Storm: How Climate Change and Wall Street Almost Killed Puerto Rico” in Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-damage-722570/ published on 9/12/18 at 12:17PM ET, accessed on 10/6/18,

8Goodell.

9David Brindly, “Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Struggling” in National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/03/puerto-rico-after-hurricane-maria-dispatches/ published in the July 2018 issue, updated 8/30/18 with new death toll. Accessed 10/6/18.

10Goodell.

11 BBC News “Puerto Rico increases Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975”https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45338080 published August 29, 2018. Accessed 10/6/18.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 7, 2018

“Meditation of My Heart” Page based on Leviticus 19:9-18 Psalm…

September 30, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What sort of world do we want to live in? What world are we trying to create? This is a central question of faith, and the answer has sacred names. It is often called the kindom of God, it is also known as the beloved community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”¹ I believe that this vision goes back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and is the the vision of the Torah itself. (The Torah is a name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.)

Today I want to look at that vision for the world, and build on it into the vision we see God seeking to build from the world as we know it today into what it could be. The vision we’ll see was one that detailed how society should be set up, specifically outlining how to to create a just system where even the vulnerable can thrive.

Not everyone sees this vision in the Hebrew Bible. Many Christians have been taught to distrust the vision of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is often interpreted into English as “the law” and that has gained disfavor in many Christian circles. Paul wrote in Romans 7, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Romans 7:6 NRSV) Those following his ideas have seen the law as old, as dated, as dead – and thus definitely not as life giving.

I think we miss a lot when we simplify that much. “The law” is a series of rules, regulations, and expectations about what it would take to develop a stable community that values human life. They’re profound, intentional, and life-giving.

The Torah vision emerges out of the core conception of the Divine in the ancient Jewish faith – that God was a God who cared about how people treated each other. God wanted the people of God to create a community where all of God’s people could survive, and thrive! This was notable in a time when most communities conceived of gods and goddesses who cared only for how humans treated the gods and goddesses – related to worship and sacrifices. Instead of a concept of God that is self-serving, the Torah vision sets out a series of rules and regulations about how humans are to treat each other, under the impression that this is what God wants from them. God is pleased when people care for each other. This is the foundation of our faith tradition, and of the Torah vision for good living.

As we see in several of the 10 commandments – don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet what your neighbor has – how neighbors get treated is central to how a stable and supportive society is formed. Of course, we also see in the 10 commandments that how God is understood matters – don’t have other gods, don’t make idols, don’t take the name of the God in vain, and even I would argue, remember the Sabbath day. These two facets coincide with the great commandments as found in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 19:18b, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” and the Shema, found in Deutoronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” On these two foundations – care for each other and love of God, ancient Israel was built.

According to John Dominic Crossan, the vision was one of distributive justice, and we see that as staring with the Sabbath. Sabbath is a distribution of rest, that applied to both Israelites, and foreigners. It applied EVERYONE, and came every week. That prevented people from being dehumanized by constant work. One day off out of seven means that there is an identity other than work. The Sabbath laws were also about distribution – distribution of rest and thus humanity! The Sabbath rules also, in a way, applied to the land. Fields were mean to lie fallow every 7 years. The Jubilee year was also an extension of Sabbath. Leviticus explains this in chapter 25:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. (Leviticus 25:8-13, NRSV)

This brings us to the the distribution of land, that land that each family returned to! Every tribe got a portion of the land and then every family got a portion of the tribe’s land. That is, every family got land on which they could live and farm. There was a careful distribution of land to enable all of the Israelites to have subsistence.

Then, there were rules and regulations to make sure that the land wouldn’t be appropriated out of the hands of the family!! One of those was the rule that loans had to be forgiven every 7 years so that debt did not accumulate. The other piece was that land could only be LEASED, as we heard in the Jubilee passage a moment ago. If a family got into financial trouble and had to sell their land, it could only be leased for up to 49 years but it could not be sold outside of the family. This meant a family could not permanently lose their basis of subsistence.

There is one exception to the land distribution though. One tribe did not get ANY land. That was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. The Levites, instead, lived off of the tithes of the other nations. The Levites were the “holy people”, from that tribe the priests were chosen. The Levites were set aside to deal with matters of the Divine. They were the moral compass of the community. The Levites were dependent on the other tribes for their survival when they otherwise had so much power, it kept them motivated to seek the well-being of the tribes because they were interdependent. It also meant that while most of society was at work farming and tending to herds, there were people pondering, considering, and attending to the big picture. It wasn’t that they were closer to God, simply that they got to spend more of their time attending to the things of God on behalf of everyone else.

The Torah vision had other safeguards in place to try to keep things just. Loans could not be given with interest. That means that there was no penalty for needing a loan. One did not go further into poverty because one was in poverty. It also means that those who were doing well enough to offer loans did not glean further wealth from it.

The was also a provision for gleaning. Those who owned land were banned from picking the edges of their fields as well as from going back to pick a second time, making sure to get it all. That way, those who didn’t have land – the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners, had a way to feed themselves by picking the leftovers. I am also under the impression that some of the work of the tithe was to feed the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners. That is, that even though the Torah tried to make sure everyone got land, there were also careful provisions for the exceptions! This is summarized in Leviticus 19, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Finally, the Bible absolutely obsesses over having a fair justice system that shows no partiality. To go back to Leviticus 19 for a concise version of this, “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15) The very concept of justice in the Torah vision is tied into the lack of partiality, neighborliness, and to God’s own nature. Almost all of those Leviticus 10 provisions end with “I am YHWH.” God’s own being requires this care of people, and this care of people is what builds a society that reflects God’s own being!!

Of course, ancient Israel often failed to live into the Torah vision. That’s why we have so many prophetic books filled with prophets calling kings and the powerful into compliance with the care of the vulnerable and justice for all!

Now, I do not wish to live in a theocracy, I think they tend to go poorly. But, I think there is a whole lot in the Torah vision that is worth considering and pondering. I don’t see a whole lot of justice in our society, and I do see a LOT of partiality. Starting with where we are today, what do we see God at work trying to create? How is God seeing to make sure all people have sustenance? How is God at work to make justice systems just and fair? How is God trying to ensure the vulnerable are cared for and that those who have experienced oppression or harm are heard? I believe we can hear this work of God, if we listen for it; and see this work of God, if our eyes are open.

Psalm 19 celebrates the vision of the Torah, it celebrates the Torah itself! It is beautiful, isn’t it? It calls the Torah a source of reviving the soul, and wisdom, and clarity. It says the Torah is sweeter than honey and better that gold! It thinks this communal living that attempts to reflect God’s love of God’s people is THAT good! What delight is there in envisioning a society, a WORLD, where all are cared for?

The Torah-vision, the kindom of God, the beloved community, they are different ways of saying the same thing. So too, I believe, is the often repeated quote from Rev. Dr. J. Edward Carothers, teaching of the church existing to “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in ever widening circles of concern.” Just so, the Psalmist says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” As people of faith, we are called into these visions – to see them, to dream them, to move towards them, to celebrate them as they come into being, and work towards them. Sometimes the biggest work of all is to dream big enough for God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Martin Luther King Jr. 1957, found at http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html. Accessed on 9/27/28.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

“Blessings… We Hope” based on Isaiah 50:4-9a and James…

September 20, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the Isaiah passage, the suffering servant describes being attacked – hit from behind, beard hairs pulled out, and spit on. Yet, as he describes the attack, it becomes clear that the words said have done more harm than the physical attack. He speaks of being insulted. He claims it is only because of God that he is not disgraced, that he is not shamed, that he can stand strong. He will not be “found guilty” because God helps him. There are people who are attacking the suffering servant, and it is clear that their words hurt.

Most likely, the disagreement between the servant and his adversaries was a big one. This passage comes from the exile, when the leaders of the community of faith were residing in Babylon, trying to survive as slaves. Walter Brueggemann says, “It seems more likely to me that the abuse comes from other members of the exilic community who have worked out a sustainable compromise between Yahweh and the empire, who do not what to have the compromise exposed or questioned, and who do not want to be pressed to decide for Yahweh and for the disruptive venture of homecoming in a distinctive identity.”¹ It is easy to imagine that both sides of that argument – to conspire with oppressors or not – would have strong opinions and good motivation to attack the other side.

It is also easy, from 2500 years and half the world away, to see valid arguments on both sides. But it seems that in the midst of the disagreement, the ways it was approached did great harm. The suffering servant is known as just that – the one who suffers – and in this passage at least, he suffers because people disagree with him and make it personal!

The Isaiah passage is a case-in-point example of the argument that James is making. James uses a whole lot of examples to validate the two key verses 9 and 10, “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” James says that if we praise and bless God, it is INCONGROUS to curse seek harm to God’s beloved people. And just in case you had missed the memo, God’s beloved people and all human beings overlap are exactly the same groups.

James says that words have a whole lot of power, including power to do great harm, so we should be careful with them. Then he says that blessing God and cursing God’s people is utterly incongruous. It is like a grapefruit tree growing figs, or a fig tree growing olives. It can’t be. Or, at least, it ought not to be.

Understanding what James meant is not the difficulty. Figuring out how to live it is the hard part. Let’s get clear on what we’re trying to do first. To start with, I’m not certain what the text means by “blessing” nor by “cursing”. Don’t get worried about me, I looked it up in 5 books, they were just concerned with other questions so they didn’t answer mine. 😉 I THINK I know what each of those things means, but it always seems worth double-checking assumptions. Particularly on days when the scripture tells teachers to be extra-cautious.

The dictionary says that to bless is “to confer or invoke divine favor on.” The dictionary footnotes say that it got used to translate the words meaning “to praise” and “to worship” from Latin, which influences its nuance in English – and that helps us avoid a circular definition when it comes to understanding what it means to bless God.² Conversely, the dictionary says that a curse is “a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”³

Not to be oppositional or anything, but it seems that the dictionary definition doesn’t exactly fit with what I’d expect. It seems to me that blessing has something to do with consecrating, that is, naming and acknowledging something for holy work. Cursing, as I think of it, has to do with wishing harm for another. This is why I wish the Bible commentaries told me exactly what it means, although I doubt they really know either. In any case, I think we have some shared sense – if broad – of what blessing and cursing are. You can go with the dictionary, with me, or with your own assumptions, I think they’ll all work.

So, what does it mean to bless God? Perhaps it just means to praise God or to worship God, perhaps it could be thought of as expressing gratitude to God for God’s goodness, mercy, and presence among us. What, then, would it mean to equivalently bless God’s people? Does it just mean seeing and remembering that each person is made in God’s image? Does it mean attending to the goodness within each one? Does it mean using our speak to build up one another? Does it require incessant praise, even if it is meaningless? Or is it more to see another, to listen to another, and to assume that the other’s being in the world is a sacred expression of the Divine – the each other person is made in the image of God and is thus infinitely beautiful??

I could ask the same questions about cursing God and cursing people, but I trust you to draw those conclusions without me knocking you on the head with them.

If, as James assumes, the response of the faithful to God and to God’s people should BOTH be words of blessing, how could we move towards that in our daily lives? How can we use our words for good? How can our tongues be blessings? When do we tend to mess this up??

One major issue to consider is how we respond to people who we think are wrong, as seen in the Isaiah passage!! I watched a TED talk about this recently, in which Karen Shultz outlines some common issues humans have when we disagree. Her talk was called “On Being Wrong” and she says:

“Think for a moment about what it means to feel right. It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality. And when you feel that way, you’ve got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they’re ignorant. They don’t have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they’re going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn’t work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they’re idiots. They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn’t work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. So this is a catastrophe.”⁴ (emphasis mine)

That sort of thinking is how we get to cases like the suffering servant. People simply disagree and then it grows into something MUCH larger. As a reminder, there are at least two more options for what might be happening when we disagree with someone: first that we might actually be mistaken (gasp!), and second that our worldviews lead us to different conclusions. Most of the time, I think disagreements come from different worldviews, and that’s a source of strength, when we let it be.

John Wesley, in his book “On Christian Perfection” says that all of us are wrong sometimes, and none of use know when we are wrong (or we’d have fixed it already!), therefore we should be humble when we disagree with another because it may well be one of the times we’re wrong. Between the two of them, Shultz and Wesley urge caution at the very least with speaking to someone you think is wrong. James, then, just adds a bit more – wish them well, and speak to them in ways that will lead to their well-being. It is a HIGH bar, but one worth seeking. So, when we start thinking someone is wrong is a VERY good time to consider how we might use our words as blessings, and not as curses!!

It is also very common to be in a position when we are feeling attacked and wanting to defend ourselves. I think most of the worst speaking I’ve ever done has been when I’ve been in that position. Both my words and my tone seem to leap out of my control! In those situations, we may identify with the servant in Isaiah, who was struck, had beard-hairs pulled out, was spit on, and insulted. That could raise most people’s defensive heckles, right??? Let’s be clear, it SHOULD. We are not people who advocate being passive in the face of harm. We are people who advocate being PEACEFUL in the in face of violence, but not PASSIVE in the face of harm. So, the servant says that with God’s help, he made it through and kept his dignity in tact through it all. He trusts that a reversal of fortunes is coming, and that the harm will end. He even suggests that those who have done harm might stand WITH him on that day.

The most practical wisdom teachers I know say that when we feel attacked we need to slow down and get curious. First ask: am I in harm’s way? If so, do whatever is possible to get away from it. Then ask: do I have the resources to hear and respond to this right now? If not, do all in your power to exit the conversation/experience safely. If, however, you are not in danger and you do feel like your internal resources are up to the task, then we get back to James’ teaching. Then we need to think about what it means to bless the person who got our heckles up, and how we can use our words – and tone – to seek their well-being and our own at the same time! That DEFINTELY requires keeping things slow, and staying with curiosity, and it tends to be a skill easiest to develop with those you already trust to like you, love you, and seek your well-being. Remember CURIOUSITY as a means of moving us to blessing, if you can!

Finally, the more I think about James affirming the importance of BLESSING and not cursing God’s beloved people, the more I suspect he was advising each of us on how we speak to OURSELVES. I don’t think I know anyone who speaks more harshly to other people than they do to themselves. In fact, most of the time when I hear people speaking harshly to others (myself included for sure), I suspect that the way they’re speaking is simply a toned-down reflection of how they speak to themselves. (By the way, this assumption helps me have a lot more compassion when people speak harshly.)

The ways most people speak to themselves sounds a lot more like cursing than it does like blessing. But James says we aren’t supposed to curse those made in the image of God, and that includes ourselves. It includes everyone else too.

So, dear ones, may we find ways to slow down our tongues, may we remember to be curious, and may our tongues be sources of blessings for God’s people, including ourselves. This world of ours is definitely in need of some blessings, and I hope we can be sources of it. Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 122.

2Apple Dictionary “bless” accessed 9/13/18.

3Apple Dictionary, “curse” accessed 9/13/18.

4 https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong/transcript?language=en, accessed 9/13/18

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 16, 2018

“Partiality” based on Psalm 125 and James 2:1-17

September 10, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The Psalm sounds … nice. It sounds… basic. Yes, yes, trusting God is good, it makes you stronger. Yes, sure, God is with us. Bleh, bleh, bleh. God is for good people and God should protect good people from bad people.

It doesn’t seem particularly unique. That is, until one reads it in context. Psalm 125 is believed to be written AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem, which involved the utter destruction of the Temple, and the forced march of the Jewish leaders to slavery in Babylon. That fact alone makes it SUPER interesting, and eliminates the seeming niceness.

Verse 1 says, “Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.” As one scholar, Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll of Ohio Wesleyan, puts it:

“The notion of ‘Zion’ in ancient Israelite literature signifies more than a particular location (i.e. Jerusalem). It always relates to the temple in Jerusalem, which was built at the highest point in the city and was sometimes referred to as the ‘mountain’ or ‘mount’ of YHWH. In the ancient world, temples were not utilized like places of worship today; temples primarily housed the presence of particular deities. Rituals were preformed in temple complexes, but they usually did not incorporate a congregation. Priests would administer these rituals to maintain the sacredness of the space so that the presence of the Divine would remain and the advantages associated with that Deity would be sustained. One of these advantages was the perceived protection of the region by the god or goddess who was worshipped.”¹

The people understood Zion to be the temple complex, and the understood it to be unbreakable. Zion was protected by God. Zion’s power and God’s power were, essentially, the same. As Dr. Ahearne-Kroll puts it, “The concept of Zion, therefore, conveys the inviolability of Jerusalem; because God’s presence resided in the temple, Jerusalem would never fail.”²Thus, it is a big deal to make such a statement about Zion AFTER Zion has fallen.

If your faith said that God would never let the Temple that held God’s presence falter; and then the Temple was destroyed; it would now mean very different things to speak of that Temple at Zion. And the Psalmist says that those who trust in God are like the impenetrable Mount Zion which abides forever, except that it mostly DIDN’T when the Psalmist wrote it.

Right before we formed the Upper New York Annual Conference, we had the final sessions of our former Annual Conferences. After the final blessing was given in Scranton, PA, a voice shouted out “The Wyoming Annual Conference is dead! Long live the Wyoming Annual Conference!” Those words have been playing in my ears in the years since. At first I thought it was silly, those words make sense when one king has died and another has been crowned, but the Wyoming Conference was gone for good. Yet, the hope and faith I learned in the Wyoming Conference still live on in me, and I believe in the world. In my years here, I have learned that the Troy Annual Conference also lives on in her people, and in their faith and hope.

It is weak, I admit that, but the feeling I had when my Annual Conference died (which, for me as a pastor, was my church), is the closest thing I can find for understanding what the Psalmist was saying about Mount Zion abiding forever. Even though what they had known was gone, even though the gone-ness of their Holy Space was a violation of how they knew God, they held firm to their faith in God. They even, intentionally, used the metaphor of the holy space that had been destroyed before their eyes as proof of God’s goodness and permanence!

The Psalmist is so bold as to say, “those who trust in God are like the unbreakable Mount Zion” because the promise and faith of Zion lived on, even when the Temple stood in ruins. Even though the physical could be destroyed, the faith it build and the faith that was practiced there could not. So, even in its own destruction, the Temple Mount served as a metaphor for the eternal. Maybe for those whose lives and livelihoods had been destroyed, only a symbol that had known destruction could be the right symbol of faith.

Nevertheless, I hold that it is radical and profound to stake the claim, “Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore.” The rest of the Psalm is a bit more honest. That’s good too. The Psalmist wishes for God to act, to kick out the oppressing force and all those who collaborated with it. The Psalmist, it seems, wishes for God to act to reestablish the impenetrability of Zion. The Psalmist wants things to be as they should be, and not as they are, and asks God to make things right again.

That’s where our two scriptures collide. James ALSO wants things to be made right again, and not to be as they are, but he thinks it is the job of the followers of Christ to make it so. James sees a problem in the community of Christ-followers, that they treat people with different means with different levels of respect. There does seem to be a little bit more going on in his narrative than what we, as moderns, initially hear in it.

The one presented as a rich man is said to be wearing a gold ring and fine clothes. That likely indicates that he was either a noble or a senator in the Roman Empire, AND that he was running for office. Thus, as one scholar says, “it would be apparent to the readers that the rich man under discussion was a representative of the aristocracy and that his connection with the Christians was supposed to be beneficial to both groups.”³

Dr. Elza Tamez, professor of theology at Latin American Biblical University in Costa Rica, says that there are two words used for “the poor” in Biblical Greek, “The poor were the ptōchoi, a Greek term designating those who totally lacked the means of subsistence and lived from alms; they were the beggars.”⁴ The other word was for poor people who had no land but did have a job. The word used in James for the poor person who enters the worshiping assembly is ptōchoi.

Thus, James’s objection is stronger than it initially appears. It isn’t just, “don’t treat rich people nicer than poor ones” although it is that. It goes a step further, “Don’t treat important people who can help your community better than you treat those who can’t afford to eat today.”

This is not the easiest teaching in the Bible, although it is fairly core. The Hebrew Bible obsesses over the treatment of the poor, particularly the most vulnerable poor. Jesus continues that tradition by engaging with and empowering people living in poverty and hopelessness. James says that God has a preference for the poor, and wants the people who follow Jesus to have that same preference. Some scholars point out that James does not condemn the rich one, or at least he does not do so inherently. Rather he condemns preferential treatment for the wealthy and powerful. He doesn’t say that the wealthy man is unwelcome, simply that he shouldn’t be treated better because he is wealthy.

James says this violates both the values of Christ and practicalities. Wealthy people were regularly oppressing the impoverished people who were the majority in the early Christian communities. The values of God and of Christ are not at all reflective of the values of material possession. The world tends to give more power to those who already have power and wealth, but that’s not how God would have it be. God who loves all of the people wants to lift up the lowly so that all have what they need to survive and thrive! Christians who are trying to build the kindom need to let go of the materialistic values of society and see people with God’s love and values!

That being said, it is much easier to say than do. The assumption that the wealthy man was likely very powerful and a possible protector of vulnerable people fits well into the challenges of living as Jesus lived. It is difficult to forego protections, particularly when you need them. It is ill-advised to anger a powerful person when their power means they can do you harm. It is much easier to fold, to give deference, to offer your chair.

It is easy to forget that when we offer deference to one who has more power, money, or influence we are inherently devaluing the one who lacks power, money, or influence. In those early house churches there wasn’t all that much room – they were in houses after all! Making space for someone meant crowding everyone else. And, as James said, it meant saying to the one who was already most vulnerable, “you can sit on the floor at my feet.”

I can’t read this passage without feeling convicted for all of the ways I fail to follow in the way of Jesus. I truly believe that God calls us to love each other – ALL of each other – with the love God has for each person. Yet, I notice ways that my treatments of people are different. I am not yet able to ignore all the ways that culture trains me to see, hear, and respond to people. (Here is hoping John Wesley is right and I’m moving on to perfection.)

Yet, I think James may know that he is asking something of people that is good to yearn for and VERY difficult to live. I think that because he goes on to talk about mercy. He encourages people to show mercy, so that they might receive mercy; assuming that they need mercy in cases like inappropriately showing partiality. It is, in fact, all tied up together. As one scholar says, “Favoritism emulated, not the law, but the oppressive measures of the rich who do not show mercy. The polar opposite of favoritism is mercy.”⁵

Mercy is “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”⁶ It is power over another that is not used, and instead grace abounds. The opposite of favoritism is mercy. Failing to show mercy is oppression. Mercy is the opposite of partiality. Isn’t that an interesting thought? Mercy, compassion towards someone you have power over – like a poor person entering a space where you belong.

May we move onto perfection. May we find the ways to eliminate partiality from our words and actions. And, in the meantime, may we show mercy. It will help make things right, and we yearn for things to be right. Amen

1Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll, “Exegetical Perspective on Psalm 125” inFeasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 33.

2Ahearne-Kroll, 35.

3Bo Reicke, The Epistles of James Peter and Jude in the Anchor Bible Series, ed. William Foxwell Abright and David Noel Freedman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964), 27.

4Elza Tamez, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 19.

5Aaron L. Uitti, “Exegetical Perspective on James 2:1-10 (11-13), 14-17” n Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 43.

6Apple Dictionary, “mercy” accessed 9/7/2018.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 9, 2018

“For Love is as Strong as Death” based on Matthew…

September 2, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most people agree with Jesus’ parable in Matthew 7: it is wiser to build a house on a solid foundation. I’m less certain that there is general agreement about what constitutes a solid foundation. Before you offer me the obvious, “like Jesus said, build on rock, not on sand,” I am going to remind some of you and inform the rest of you that you are currently sitting in a sanctuary of a “floating church.” When foundation work was being done for this building, it became clear that the bedrock was simply too deep to be reached. An underground stream flows here, and it is deep and wide. Our ancestors in faith decided to build this church on the foundation of oak beams in the stream. As long as the oak beams stay wet, which is as long as the underground stream continues to run, we are sitting on a firm foundation.

I love this little piece of our shared history, because it complicates matters. Not all things are rocks or sand. Sometimes what you have is mud, and even that can make a firm foundation if you do it right!

I’ve been reviewing some of my books about love, romance, and marriage in preparation for preaching today. In the book “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” author Stephanie Coontz says, “only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married. When someone did advocate such a strange belief, it was no laughing matter. Instead, it was considered a serious threat to social order.”¹ In fact, other than in the West for the past 200 years, love has NOT been seen as a reason to get married, and most of the time it has often been seen as a good reason not to. For almost all of history, people have thought that love is shifting sand, and not a solid foundation.

We are here today to disagree. As people of faith, especially, we think that love is THE foundation.

Song of Songs helps us disagree. Many scholars believe that the passage we read from Song of Songs today is the culmination of that book. Song of Songs is a celebration of romantic and sexual love. The book delights in physical bodies and articulates the joy that each of the lovers have in being together. The Song is remarkably nonjudgmental about eroticism and sex. (It is the only book in the Bible where a women’s voices dominate, and she uses her voice to speak of her desire and love.)²

The text is often shocking to the modern reader, but while ancient Israel expected fidelity in marriage, it had a positive attitude toward sexual love, in part because it led to propagation of family and society. “Ancient Israel perceived the wonders of human sexuality, fulfilled in marital love, to be a divine blessing.”³

It is always worth wondering about why this text made it into the Bible, and how people have thought about it over time. Scholars have pointed out that today’s text sounds a lot like Isaiah 43:2. Hear again what we read a moment ago:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.

– Song of Songs 8:6-7

Isaiah 43:2 says:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

The words in Isaiah are attributed to God, and aim to assure the exiles that their exile will come to an end. “The peace and security of the eschatological era is thus evoked … in this verse which affirms that nothing can again disturb the tranquil and profound attachment of the Bride to the Bridegroom.”⁴ The comparison between the texts makes the claim that love is similarly relentless, and thus solid foundation.

The seal that is placed on the heart and on the arm reminds me of the commandment in Exodus 13:9, “It shall serve for you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the teaching of the Lord may be on your lips; for with a strong hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt.” Throughout the Song of Songs there is an assumption that “human and divine love mirror each other.”⁵

As one scholar puts it, Pope, “Love is the only power that can cope with Death.”⁶ Throughout the entire book, the Song focuses on transforming death to life. A scholar writes, “Love, through metaphor and simile, is the sum of all pleasures; the lovers represent all the creatures and life-forces in the world; now they and that which animates them are set against death, in the context of birth.”⁷ The same scholar concludes, “If Death overcomes all opposition, it must inevitably engage love, dissever all ties of affection; if Love is of infinite value, it must encounter the ultimate fear, the threat to existence.”⁸

The Song celebrates human love, I believe, because human love is the closest expression we get to Divine love. (Please note that I’m talking about love broadly, not only about romantic love.) Romans 12 gives instructions how human beings can express God’s love for each other. It says that relationships matter, and God is in the midst of those relationships. To be in relationship with God IS to be in good relationship with those around us. To harm those in our lives IS to harm God.

Eugene Peterson translates verse 10b, which in the NRSV says, “outdo one another in showing honour” as “practice playing second fiddle.” As far as I know, second fiddle is usually a harmony part that supports the melodies. It is a role that is needed, but it isn’t the most prestigious one. Most instrumentalists practice to become the FIRST, the top, of their sections. Romans suggests the goal of reflecting God’s love in the world requires us to practice for the supporting roles sometimes. It is about relationships, not performance. It is about supporting each other along the way.

Romans, too, helps us consider how to build solid foundations. The foundation of two people supporting each other is just a lot stronger than if only one supports the other.

Thomas Moore in his book Soulmates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship says, “The word intimacy means ‘profoundly interior.’ It comes from the superlative form of the Latin word inter, meaning ‘within.’ It could be translated, ‘within-est,’ or ‘most within.” In our intimate relationships, the ‘most within’ dimensions of ourselves and the other are engaged.”⁹ This is how human love and Divine love are reflections of each other. Both relationships Divine and loving relationships between humans are profoundly intimate. They inform each other, build on each other, express each other.

Moore says, “The intimacy we pledge at the wedding is an invitation to open Pandora’s box of soul’s graces and perversities. Marriage digs deep into the stuff of the soul. Lifelong, intense, socially potent relationships don’t exist without touching the deepest, rawest reservoirs of the soul. Few experiences in life reach such remote and uncultivated regions of the heart, unearthing material that is both incredibly fertile and frighteningly primordial.”¹⁰ Perhaps this is why for so long, humans lived in fear of romantic love as a foundation. It reaches into the depths of people, and finds the squishy stuff inside.

I keep going back to those those oak beams though. They’re going to hold up this church as long as they stay wet, but they’ll lose their strength if ever they dry out. The foundation is strong as long as the invisible, underground stream keeps flowing. The squishy stuff inside of us, the soul stuff, the primordial stuff, the stuff that intimacy touches – it is wet too. It, too, can look like an unstable foundation, and it too, can keep something like those oak beams strong and steady!

There is enough within us to keep “oak beams” wet and strong too – as long as we keep living into the vulnerable, the primordial, the intimate, the loving. Maybe it sounds weird to build a church on an underground stream – likely because it is. I guess in the course of history it sounds weird to base something so important as marriage on love! But those oak beams have been holding us up for 147 years, and I think there is enough squishiness in love to make a very strong foundation for marriage too. I think Jane and Jim are wise, in building their lives on the foundation of love, and thus on on the reflection of the Divine that is human love. I think their love is as strong as death, and that’s plenty of foundation.

Finally, I remain grateful for the hope that seeing love like theirs offers for all of us. Love, whether romantic, familial, or friendship, gives us glimpses of how the Divine relates to us. And that Divine love is the strongest foundation that I know of, bar none. That love, I’d even go so far as to say, is STONGER than death. That love is the foundation of the universe. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (USA: Penquin books, 2005) 15.

2It occurs to me that someone could argue about Ruth, but I don’t think Ruth reflects actual women’s voices so much as a voices ascribed to women by male authors.

3 Roland Murphy The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the Song of Songs in S. Dean McBride Jr, editor Hermeneia: A Critical & Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 99.

4 Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1977), 674.

5 Murphy, 104.

6 Pope, 210.

7 Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs(Sheffield, England: The Almond Press, 1983), 114.

8 Landy, 123.

9Thomas Moore Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationships (HarperPerennial, 1994), 23

10Moore, 59.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 2, 2018