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“Sin and Repentance (What!?)”  Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

  • December 11, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

My natural instinct, when I hear the word sin, is to stick my fingers in my ears and sing a song approximating “la la la, I can’t hear you.” For the most part, this is not particularly productive. 😉 For the most part. 😉

To a certain degree, I think it is justifiable. Too much of Christianity focuses on individual sin: on guilt, the need forgiveness, and the threat of punishment for said sins. While this doesn’t seem to go back to Jesus, it does have a long history in the church. In fact, this fear based scheme has been a primary funding tool for churches for a REALLY long time. Churches who claim the exclusive power to offer God’s forgiveness have usually offered it with a price tag.

Thus, within the church, sin language has sounded like manipulation, for the purpose of controlling people, that mostly prevents the full and abundant lives that God ACTUALLY wants from us. Furthermore, focusing on individual sins keeps us from having time, energy, and passion to dismantle the CORPORATE sins of institutions and our society at large. (Like, for example, churches manipulating people to get their money.) Since I don’t believe God intends for us to be motivated by fear, and I don’t think good comes from guilt nor shame I really don’t buy into the standard logic on this topic. I do believe we need Divine Grace, but not to prevent us from condemnation in hell; more because all of us seek love and acceptance in our lives and knowing that God is already there loving and accepting us is a very good start to healthy living.

For many people the assumptions about sin, punishment, forgiveness, and God are the CORE of their faith; they think it IS Christianity. Thus, I often disengage from the word, and just tone it out. Tearing down people’s faith isn’t a good thing. However, what serves me well running in Christian circles does not serve me nearly as well when I’m working with the Bible. The Bible doesn’t mean “sin” the way that mainstream Christianity does. When I block my ears from the word, I often miss important things in the text.

All of this is to confess that in all the years I’ve read this Gospel passage, I’ve always mentally skipped over the lines, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” (NRSV)

Suddenly, now, it occurs to me to wonder what sins they’re talking about and why. And suddenly, it becomes clear that Mark is quoting Isaiah, and the context of Isaiah might make sense of Mark … and this might actually be a very important question. (Which means I likely should have paid attention to this earlier.)

The Isaiah text today is the beginning of Second Isaiah, and this is the same text Mark quotes. The massive book of Isaiah (66 chapters) is believed to actually be three different prophets at three different times. The first speaks before the Exile, warning about it. Second Isaiah speaks in the immediate aftermath. The Exile is the name for the defeat and conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in 587 BCE. At that time, after a long siege, the city fell, and atrocious violence resulted. Many were killed, the city’s walls and temple were destroyed, and the remaining leaders were taken into captivity in Babylon. This was the Exile. It lasted 70 years by the shortest counts.

First Isaiah contains many dire warnings about what will happen if the systems don’t change. Second Isaiah represents a huge change in tone in the book starting with the words, “Comfort, O Comfort my people says your God.” Into the immediate aftermath of the horror, the prophet speaks words of comfort and hope. The people generally assumed that their military defeat was a punishment from God, and into that assumption is spoken a declaration that the punishment has ended. It is followed by a vision of God in action, making it easy for those who were forcibly marched as captives to Babylon to walk home with ease and safety. It is this that is quoted in Mark, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Then comes the “comfort” of a reminder that those who oppress will also fade, that oppression will not stand. Finally, our passage evokes God as Shepherd King, gathering the people, leading them, feeding them, and carrying them home.

All of this is evoked in Mark. It is as if the people feel like they are back in Exile and are needing God’s help finding their way home – again. The people are experiencing oppression from an outside force, and presumably many of them are now wondering if this oppression is a punishment from God, and therefore if there is a need to repent in order for God to restore them once again. If that experience of being dominated by Rome felt like the experience of being dominated by Babylon in the Exile, then it makes sense that the same theological reasoning would apply to both. Under this perspective, John the Baptist was there to make that repentance possible, and therefore change the reality of oppression.

Now, the ancient Jews, like their descendants today and the Bible itself, focused on COMMUNAL sin: on the injustices of society, on the systemic harm done to the vulnerable, on practices that harmed the weak, on systems that kept some down and some on top of them, etc. Those prophets of old were consistently accusing the kings of abusing their power, of forgetting that their power existed to care for the vulnerable and disempowered. The prophets, time and time and time again, reminded those in power that God had envisioned a just society; and warned that instead it had become exploitative.

Those prophets kept saying that if things didn’t change, the society would not be able to hold up its own weight. This may be why most of the people interpreted the Exile as God’s punishment, even though the prophets saw it simply as a consequence. But since this was a common understanding of how the world works, and since the people in the time of Jesus were living lives of oppression and exploitation from an external empire, it seems likely that they would be aware again of their communal sin and be seeking ways to reconnect with God who was known to act to restore their holistic communal life.

And this John the Baptist guy, he gave them a way to do it. Furthermore, the Temple at that point was understood to be the place to seek forgiveness, but the Temple had been appropriated by the Roman Empire and no longer truly existed to serve God OR the people. In fact, it may have been more of a source of manipulating the people than serving anyone. John had taken power and authority that was assumed to belong to Temple, and was using it to give people a way to connect to God who might act to change their oppression.

This is the man who will baptize Jesus. That means, this is the man who Jesus looked to as teacher. They really were working with some powerful and dangerous ideas! No wonder the Empire felt threatened.

As I’ve reflected on these texts and the themes of Exile and Return, I’ve wondered how those themes fit our lives. Do we feel like we are in Exile even within our own country like the Jews of Jesus day did? There are certainly many ways that is true. And we yearn for the restoration of the country as we thought we knew it and as we think it should be. There are many within our country who do not experience its benefits, who also have reason to identify primary with the Exile.

There are also ways that we might identify with the Babylonians, the captors. This is less comfortable, but sometimes it is true anyway. As citizens of the country with the world’s most significant military might, we might admit that our country is like Babylon to many. Or, we might consider the impacts of unfettered capitalism on the world, of patriarchy, and of white supremacy. Each of these are forms of Exile, and to the extend that we are parts of groups that benefit from them, we are the captors.

Oppression dehumanizes everyone involved. As much as the ancient Jews yearned for God’s actions to free them from oppression, if the Babylonians (and Romans) had known what was good for them, they would have yearned for the same. The Exiles repented in hopes of changing their reality of being oppressed. The Babylonians needed the same change too – but with far less awareness of their need. Everyone was dehumanized, and everyone needed freedom from the system. Please note that the same amount of harm was not done to oppressed and oppressor, but at the same time the oppressor was dehumanized to the extent that they dehumanized others. Does that make sense?

For example, I’m saying that while slavery did most of its harm to the slaves, the actions of dehumanizing the slaves inherently marred the humanity of the slave owners. The slave owners may have thought they were reaping benefits, and financially they were, but significant and yet invisible damage was done to their … to their souls and their humanity. That damage lives on, still harming individuals and the collective today in the form of racism.

So, if what God seeks is people who are living full and abundant lives with their humanity (and their souls) intact, then God inherently is seeking a world without oppression. Throughout many eras, God’s people have repented in hopes of transforming oppression. To repent, as the word comes from the Hebrew, means “change of mind.”1 Getting out of the mindset of oppression is an imperative initial step of changing it, from either side. (Thought it is VERY rare that transformation from oppression comes from oppressors who reap the visible gain from the system.) That opportunity that John the Baptist was giving individuals to repent of their communal sin is looking better and better.

It does turn out that most of us HAVE gotten to particulate in (at least a variation of) John the Baptisms ritual. 😉 I know, I know, I’m just a font of novel information. As previously mentioned, I’m usually squirmy about “sin” language, and thus I haven’t always been the biggest fan of the first two baptism questions in the UMC. However, as they come to focus with this story, they might be waaaaay more awesome than I thought. Hear them again:

Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?2

These baptismal vows offer us a way to “change our minds” from the oppressive ways of the world, and live in freedom from oppression. They give us a chance to reject the systems of injustice. They let us dream of and be part of the the world we want to build. They free us from the power of sin that keeps us stuck in oppressive systems, and lead us to freedom for ourselves and for all people.

The best part is, as United Methodists, we believe that baptism is a God’s good gift given to us and humans cannot, ever, in any way, mess it up. So, that freedom from sin and that opportunity to repent from systems of oppression so that we can live in (and MODEL) freedom – that’s with all us for the long run. We can always have access. We are never cut off. Thanks be to God, for messages of sin and repentance that lead us to freedom from oppression. May we lean into our baptismal vows and use the power God gives us to live lives of freedom for ourselves and those around us. Amen

1W. Tatum Barnes “John the Baptist and Jesus: a report of the Jesus Seminar” (Polebridge Press: Sonoma, CA, 1994) page 122.

2In this case, I got these from: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/the-baptismal-covenant-iv so I didn’t have to type them, on December 6, 2017.

–

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

“Here, in the Brokenness” based on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark…

  • December 3, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I
don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but things are not as they should
be.  Actually, I suspect you have noticed it, but it feels like time
to explicitly name two of the very many ways in which this is true.

First
of all, our society is and has been awash in sexual harassment and
assault.  Many, many men have used whatever power and influence they
have in the world for their own pleasure at the expense of others,
most often women.  This is not news, per say, and yet there is
something happening.  

This
is much like the impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement on police
brutality, it isn’t that any of the behaviors are new or different,
it is that suddenly people are paying attention to the atrocities,
and calling for accountability en masse.  Important and powerful men
have been removed from the positions they’ve used abusively.  The
status quo is being interrupted, and that’s good.

Yet,
it isn’t good enough.  This week I had the incredible joy of holding
the youngest member of our church family in my arms.  (It is GOOD to
be pastor.)  I wanted to be able to promise her a world where she
wouldn’t know sexual harassment or assault, where she will be safe to
be whoever she is, where-ever she wants to be, no matter who is
nearby, all the time.  The yearning that I had to offer her that
world clarified how very far we are from it, AND how desperately
needed it is.

Secondly,
we live in a country that accepts poverty as a necessary component of
life.  Based on our policies, it is OK if people are hungry –
whether they are working or not, whether they’ve applied for SNAP
benefits or not, whether they are children or adults. Based on our
policies, it is OK if people are homeless, and if a person struggles
with addiction – by our policies – it is almost as if they don’t
deserve to be housed.  Based on our policies, only people who can
afford to pay for it deserve the right to health care.  Based on our
policies, it is acceptable for those without money to be
misrepresented or underrepresented in court, and spend time in jail
for crimes they didn’t commit.  Based on our current policies, not
even children have a right to health care.  

All
of these are choices, choices that we have made as a society about
what we value and who we value.  Budgets are moral documents, budgets
indicate what an organization really values.  Our society values the
growth of the economy, the growth of our exceptional military might,
and the flow of wealth from the bottom to the top OVER the capacity
to care for the vulnerable, the elimination of hunger, the
accessibility of health care, the safety of housing, or the fairness
of the courts.

Things
are NOT as they should be, and those were just two examples.  There
are many ways that things are not as they should be.

This
is not the first time in history that this has been true.  According
to Marcus Borg, the earliest human societies did not have significant
wealth differentiation nor oppression.  The first two types of
societies were hunter gatherer and early horticultural.  About them,
Borg says, “Differentials of wealth and power were minor.”1
However, once full fledged agricultural societies developed about
5000  years ago,  it became possible to generate wealth.  In the time
of Jesus agriculture was the primary form of wealth.2
Borg calls the system at the time of Jesus the preindustrial
agricultural domination system.3
As far as I can tell, a few
things have changed since the time of Jesus: we’re now industrial or
post industrial and wealth is no longer primarily acquired through
agriculture.  

Domination
systems that have oppressed the many for the sake of the few have
been the norm in the world since the development of full-scale
agriculture.  The pieces of the world that concern me the most are
all parts of domination systems, ways that the systems are rigged
against the majority of the population for the benefit of a small
minority.  David Graeber, in “Debt: A History of the first 5000
years” theorizes that the world’s major religions have all emerged
as a a response to the particular ways that domination systems
existed in their parts of the world.4
I’m going to take a stronger theological stance on that and say that
God has been at work in the world to disrupt domination systems as
long as they have existed, and the particular forms of that work have
been formalized into religious traditions.

We
hear in the texts today the same yearnings we know in our lives for
the world as it SHOULD be rather than the world as it is.  These
texts feel familiar to me, to the depths of my soul.  The Hebrew
Bible text doesn’t JUST come from Isaiah, who is my favorite, it
comes from third Isaiah – the last 7 chapters of the book – which
is the very best part of Isaiah.  The prophet speaks of deep yearning
for God’s presence, a presence that would change reality from its
brokenness to its fulness.  The prophet remembers times that God has
felt present and has made things better.  The prophet celebrates that
God is one who cares about how the people treat each other, and yet
bemoans that God feels very far away.  In fact, the prophet worries
that God is angry because the people have so profoundly mistreated
each other, and made peace with a society of deep injustice.  The
prophet suggests that because God isn’t changing reality, they are
stuck living in the mess they made, without God delivering them from
it, and that isn’t OK at all.  

Oh
Isaiah, how can you speak from so long ago truths that can still
sting with truth?  I’m sometimes frightened that texts from 2500
years ago are still so accurate, which means that domination systems
haven’t lost their grip even as they’ve changed their ways.

At
first glance, or first hearing, or for me first 100 hearings, Mark
doesn’t sound like he is saying the same thing.  Luckily, there are
those among you who share things with me when they seem useful, and
one of you sent me a reflection that opened my eyes to this text.5

This
passage in Mark appears just before the passion narrative begins,
Mark is using this text as a foreshadowing of the meaning of the
death and resurrection of Jesus.  Like the passion narrative, it will
start in the night and shake the powers of the world.  David Luce
writes, “Mark,
in other words, isn’t pointing us to a future apocalypse
(“revealing”) but rather a present one, as Christ’s death and
resurrection change absolutely everything.”6
For the gospel writer of Mark, the yearning represented in Isaiah is
FULFILLED by Jesus.  For the gospel writer, Jesus is the presence of
God in the world changing things from how they are to how they should
be.  At the same time, as Christians today, we know that the work
Jesus did in the world wasn’t completed in his life, but is ours to
continue as the current Body of Christ.

So,
the gospel writer speaks of things being pretty bad: suffering, the
sun and moon no longer giving the world light, the stars falling to
nothingness.  In the midst of that horror, Jesus will break in and
transform it all.  The gospel writer encourages people to be looking
for the signs that hope is about to break into the brokenness.  The
gospel writer, I think, is hoping to encourage people in the midst of
some very bad days, to understand the brokenness itself as a sign
that things were about to change.

It
is hard, nearly 2000 years later, with all the brokenness that has
been between then and now to be as certain that the change is right
on the horizon.  The yearning is easy to connect with. The hope is
imperative to connect with, the but the time frame is harder to buy
into.

I
do think that God is present with us, and that God is ever working
for justice, for dismantling the domination systems, for transforming
the world as it is into the kindom itself.  While we seem pretty
resilient to God’s work, and while many things as are broken around
us, I’m told by historians who have a broader view than I do that big
and amazing things have gotten better.

Some
things aren’t all that new, but are pretty cool anyway.  The
experiment in universal public education that started in
Massachusetts has had a huge impact on the world and its literacy.
All of those hospitals that various churches started over the
centuries have had an amazing impact in global health and longevity.

According
to the annual letter from the Gates Foundation (one of my favorite
reads), in the past 25 years childhood mortality rates for kids under
5 have dropped by 50%!  Most of these preventable deaths have been
prevented because global vaccine access has increased, and 86% of the
world’s kids are now adequately vaccinated.  The Gates Foundation
says that 300 million women in the developing world now have access
to and use contraception, which increases maternal and child health,
decreases childhood morality rates, increases education, and lowers
poverty.  These 300 million women represent over half of the women
seeking to have it, but they’re actively working on it, and the
problem will be cut by over half again by 2020!  As a reminder as
well, since 1990, worldwide extreme poverty (living on less than $2 a
day) has been cut in HALF.7

The
news that we hear mostly focuses on the broken, and in the past year
entirely too much of my attention has been on the broken.  We live in
a world of domination systems, and many many things are broken.  At
the same time, God IS at work in the world, working with people, and
together we are making many things better.  

Dear
ones, the world is broken, and things are not as they should be.

AND

God
is at work in the world, there are many things that are getting
better, and the work we do matters.

It
is all true.  And here in the brokenness, we yearn for God’s kindom
to come, just as Isaiah did, just as Mark did, and as God’s people
have through the ages.  May the day come when the yearning is
fulfilled.  Amen

1Marcus
Borg, “Jesus:
Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary” (USA:
HarperOne, 2006)  79-80. (Quote
on 80.)

2Borg,
80-81.

3Borg,
79.

4David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 83.

5David
Luce, email/blog  entitled “…In the Meantime” Posted: 27
Nov 2017 07:50 AM PST  Found at
http://www.davidlose.net/2017/11/advent-1-b-a-present-tense-advent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29.

6Luce.

7Bill
and Melinda Gates “Dear Warren: Our 2017 Annual Letter”  written
February 14, 2017
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO
accessed December 2, 2017.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

December 3, 2017

“Shepherds and Salvation” based on Matthew 25:31-46 and Ezekiel…

  • November 26, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Today
is “Christ the King” Sunday, sometimes called “Reign of Christ
Sunday.”  It is the last Sunday of the Christian Liturgical year,
the completion of the annual cycle of remembrance and growth.  Next
Sunday we start a new year of remembering and recreating with the
beginning of a new Advent.   I often skip these texts, and this
topic.  Most years the hierarchy of monarchy and patriarchy of
kingship combined with ridiculously high Christology are enough to
turn my stomach.  Many years Thanksgiving gives me a way out.

This
year I heard the texts and the topic with a different energy.  This
year I heard them speak about leadership, and I heard them speaking
about leadership in a radically different way than it is normally
spoken of.  As I continued to reflect on the texts, I was reminded
that not everyone identifies as a leader, but we all lead.  Much of
the leadership in human history and even today has been about
CONTROL, and about having power OVER other humans.  God doesn’t call
anyone into that sort of leadership.  God calls us into relationships
with each other, and leadership in that vein is about shared
empowerment.  That is, I think that there are leadership components
in every relationship, even (if I’m honest) the relationship we have
with ourselves.  That is, within each of us there are various needs,
desires, and values vying for control, and some of the work of our
lives is to balance each of those so that good is maximized – thus
there is leadership within.

Unfortunately,
often relationship between people are centered on control, instead of
on mutual benefit, listening, and affection.  Those relationships
reflect a system of broken leadership, utterly unlike the idea of the
reign of God – which is also called the kindom of God.

It
seems at times that we don’t spend adequate focus on the kindom of
God.  You may disagree, and that’s OK!  However, since the kindom is
mentioned twice in the Lord’s Prayer, and is said to be the ACTUAL
messages that Jesus preached in his ministry, I don’t think is is
possible to focus on it too much.

Together,
we spend a few sermons focusing on it in 2014, and I want to bring
back some of the ideas we talked about then.  They seem really
central to our faith, and it has been a while (and not everyone was
here then.)  Both then, and now, I think this quote from Rev. Dr.
John Cobb is the most important thing I can share to bring the idea
of the kindom of God into clarity:

“Jesus
did not do away with the future tense. We still pray for its coming.
Clearly there is no earthly political region (basileia) that realizes
this ideal. Nevertheless, what is different in Jesus message is that
this ideal is already being realized. He says it is ‘at hand.’ Even
in his lifetime, to follow him was to take part in this new reality.
His table fellowship already realized it.”1
“Jesus understood his message to be the proclamation
of the kingdom of heaven understood as a great opportunity or
blessing, not as a terrifying judgment. … ’The kingdom is
“at hand.” The requirement for being part of that kingdom is that
one change the basic way one thinks and lives. … Even more
important in my view is that a “basileia” need not be
hierarchically governed at all. Of course, the “basileia” Jesus
proclaimed involved God’s will being done. But when we read the
beatitudes, to take but one example, we may be struck by the
absence of one saying that those who obey God’s laws are blessed.
The first one, for example, says “blessed are the poor in
spirit,” and it goes on to say explicitly that “for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” (Mt.5:3) There is nothing here to indicate that
we should understand that the government of the divine
“basileia” would be like that of an earthly
kingdom, simply with God replacing the earthly ruler. That may have
been the theology of the translators of the New Testament, but there
is no reason to attribute it to Jesus. Jesus prayed to God as “abba”
of “papa.” Papa cares deeply how his children behave but even
more for their true happiness. The basileia of abba is
not a “kingdom.” I know of not perfect translation, but I am
fully convinced that “commonwealth” is better than “kingdom.”
One of the ways in which Jesus called people to change their thinking
was away from the hierarchical mindset that expresses itself in
“kingdom.”2

While
I REALLY like the idea of the commonwealth of God, or the basileia, I
most often use the phrase “kindom of God.”  I use it because it
is identifiable as related to the “kingdom of God” and also names
a different dream – the dream of the time when all the world will
live in justice and peace because all people will treat each other as
kin.  If there is any meaning to Christ being KING, it is that this
sort of kindom is what the Body of Christ is working on building.

By
the way, this kindom of God is language from the New Testament, but
it isn’t something that really started with Jesus.  Jesus preaching
was continuous with and based on the visions of God from the Hebrew
Bible.  Rev. Dr. Cobb
connects the prophetic tradition with Jesus’ kindom message saying,

“Jesus
calls us uncompromisingly to enter the prophetic tradition of Israel,
the one long-lasting tradition in human history that calls for a
reversal of the social, political and economic values that are
otherwise universally accepted. True wisdom is not what is taught in
universities. True wealth is not material possessions. True power is
not the ability to force people to do one’s will. Communities based
on this deep reversal are “at hand.” We can take part in them as
a foretaste of God’s hope for the whole world. Jesus understood his
mission to be to proclaim and realize this possibility.”3

That
all being said, the work of the Body of Christ to build the kindom
may make more sense in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, as
he preached it,

“We
shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot
in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation
with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and
threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and
beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be
ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One
day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so
appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the
process and our victory will be a double victory.”4

In
their own ways, our texts today also point to the kindom of God.  The
Gospel lesson has long annoyed me, mostly because it seems to assume
that salvation has to do with afterlife, and I simply don’t think
that reflects the authentic Jesus.  The Jesus Seminar colored this
text black (vindication!!), indicating that they don’t think it
reflects the actual words or ideas of Jesus, but rather of the early
Christian community.  

The
text is worried about the care of “the least of these” which is
part of what the kindom of God is all about. One scholar points out
that of the ways that the sheep and goats were judged, “The first
five actions were typical Jewish acts of mercy.  (Jews did not use
imprisonment as punishment.)”5
Matthew thought that while those early Christians were waiting for
Jesus to come back, they should act in continuity with good living as
both Jesus and the Jews had understood it.  That scholar connects
these commandments even more strongly to the kindom, saying, “Jesus
teaches that God’s reign, the full revelation of which we await –
is characterized in the present, not by powerful works and miracles,
but by deeds of love, mercy, and compassion, especially toward those
most in need.”6

Our
Ezekiel passage understands salvation to be healing for the whole
community, not a particular form of afterlife. (Phew)  It sees all of
us as sheep – some overfed and some underfed- but all the same.
This text speaks of a God who wants justice, not punishment.  There
is a bit of punishment in it, but even within that, God’s concern is
for caring for the afflicted!  This passage comes after an extended
metaphor about the leaders of Israel being like bad shepherds who
don’t care for their sheep.  Here, God claims that God will shepherd
the people directly, since the human leaders have failed them so
badly.  Historically, this passage is placed within the exile, and
Ezekiel is speaking hope to the people in a time and place when hope
itself is a form of resistance!

God
wants the people well led, so
that justice and love define their lives together.  In both the
Gospel and in Ezekiel we see the concern God has in how ALL of the
people are treated, especially the vulnerable.  God wants the people
to have good leaders, who care about the vulnerable, who care about
the well-being of the whole community, who are using the resources
they have for the COMMUNAL well-being instead of just using the power
for their own enrichment.  The Bible, time and time again, calls on
leaders and on the justice system to be FAIR, and JUST, and to make
sure the vulnerable have a fair chance.  It really is a different
idea of what leadership is than I tend to see in the world at large.

We,
all of us, are called into the kindom, which is build on people
believing in an alternative set of values – values of cooperation,
values of shared joy, values of hope, a refusal to discount the full
humanity of anyone, of peaceful resistance, of trust in God.  The
kindom one where all the sheep are well-cared for.  It requires
leadership, and it requires it of all of us.  We have to let go of
the idea of power over others or control of them, that isn’t the way
of God.  Enforcing our will isn’t leadership.  Caring about each
other’s well-being, listening and responding, that’s leadership.  As
Jesus said, the kindom is at hand. We are called to be leaders of the
kindom.  May we learn the values well, and teach them with our lives.
Amen

1 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

2 Dr.
John Cobb “Third
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-01-26/third-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed on January 25, 2014.

3 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-02-02/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

4
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King A
Christmas Sermon for Peace on Dec 24, 1967

5 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ “Exegetical Perspective on Matthew 25:31-46” in
Feasting on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press:
Louisville, KY, 2011) 335

6 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ,  337

–

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

“Noticing What Has Gone Well” based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18

  • November 20, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

As far as I can tell, gratitude is imperative to a holistic spiritual life. It might be the most important component. While this is something we know intuitively, recent research has emphasized its importance. Gratitude practices can change our perspectives, lighten our moods, and help us feel more at peace in the world. (This seems good, right? We might need this, especially now.)

One of you had a friend who had a wonderful practice: every day she took a moment to write down the thing she was most grateful for on a slip of paper and put it in a vase. On New Year’s Eve she read them, one by one, and reflected on her year. I love the double blessing of this: both the practice of paying attention each day and the opportunities to review the good parts of a year.

At the core, I am aware of two very different motivations for faith. It seems to me that many people are motivated by fear, and that sort of religion has never been interesting to me. The other choice seems to be a motivation of gratitude: that because of being loved by God, and being grateful, we choose to love in return (because that’s what God asks of us.)

Indeed, I think gratitude is at the very core of faith itself. Which is why I want to spend today looking at its ugly underbelly. Gratitude matters too much to be blind to how it can be misused.

The Deuteronomy text gives us a way to look at some of the underside of gratitude. This is a text suggested for the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and it cuts off the chapter two verses from the end. When it is read as suggested, it makes some important points. Like the rest of the book of Deuteronomy, this text is concerned about the complacency that comes with wealth and well-being.

The idea is that the people learned to depend on God in the desert, when all they had to eat was manna, and even access to water limited and based on God’s will. (This is their story, I might choose to tell it differently, but it is their story.) Once they got into the land with its abundances of gifts, they might forget that they are just as dependent on God in the Promised Land as they were in the desert. From manna to wheat and barley, vines and fig trees and pomegranates, olive trees, and honey and an abundance of water! As Ronald Clements puts it in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “It is precisely this richness and abundance that is seen as a temptation to forget God and the divine commandments.”1 Or, as Walter Brueggemann puts it in his commentary on Deuteronomy, “A gift kept long enough begins to seem like a possession.”2

The text is deeply concerned that having access to wealth will lead the people to think they’ve earned the good lives they have, and that it will lead them away from God. Now, I think Deuteronomy is concerned about complacency because of the Exile. That is, the book was written down in the form it is is now after the people had lost the land, their power, and many of their people. They were trying to figure out what they could have done differently to prevent that from happening, and when they looked backward, they were concerned that they’d become complacent. They thought they should have remembered the desert, and the dependence on God, and remained grateful.

However, the text doesn’t really end where we left it. The final two verses in this section are, “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.” These lines raise much deeper concerns about gratitude for me. You see, the story of the Bible is that God gave the Promised Land to the ancient Israelites.

Furthermore, the Bible acknowledges that there were ALREADY PEOPLE living in the land when God decided to give it to “the people,” and the Bible says that God lead the ancient Israelites to kill them off so the ancient Israelites could have the land instead. Believe it or not, there is both good news and bad news on this front.

The good news is that the killing off of all the people in the land didn’t actually happen. We know this in at least two important ways: the first is that for the rest of the Bible’s history we hear the challenges of living intermingled with the people of the land, the ones who didn’t follow God. That indicates they weren’t all killed off. Secondly, archeological research has looked at the cities that existed in the land at that time, and they simply weren’t concurred or destroyed. (So, no, Joshua did NOT fight the battle of Jericho, but that’s a story for another day.) Addison Wright, a Catholic Biblical Scholar, thinks it was most likely that a very small band of nomadic people had an exceptionally profound experience of the divine in the desert – a God who cared about how people treated each other; when they got to a land they wanted to settle in they told their story; and the people in that place were moved by the story and choose to claim it as their own. Thus the origins of ancient Israel was a mixture of the native people of the land and those who entered it with the God-story.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad news. The history of North and South America was formed by the Bible’s meta-narrative about God’s Promised Land and the right of those with might to take it from those who already lived on it. The Bible speaks of God giving the land to God’s people, including God giving the people military victory. It sounds horribly like Manifest Destiny, doesn’t it? While the mass killing of ancient Palestine didn’t happen, the mass killing in the Americas most certainly did, and it was justified with these Biblical stories.

(The Bible is a very scary weapon.)

This week, as our nation celebrates Thanksgiving, we remember with gratitude the Native people’s generosity in sharing their food to keep the early European settlers alive. Our country’s narrative usually ends there (or at least that’s how I learned it as a child), and ignores that the European settlers responded to this generosity with mass murder, justified by the Bible. According to A People’s History of the United States, “The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalm 2:8, ‘Ask of me and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’ And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2, ‘Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’”3

Personally, I am grateful for the Native Americans who fed those settlers, and helped them make it through the winter. At the same time, gratitude alone seems insufficient when looking at the larger story. Telling the story as I was taught it as a child glosses over a much larger story of genocide, one justified with our faith tradition, one whose impacts are still very much alive in the Native American people and their descendants today.

As a descendant of those Pilgrims, how can I claim gratitude for the actions of the Native people without letting that gratitude turn into complacency for the profound harm that was also a part of the story? As a faith descendant of those ancient Israelites, how do I make sense of their stories of violence in the name of God, and the justification of violence that has come from those stories? And how do I hold that in tension with my gratitude for the text itself and the stories of faith? As a person of relative wealth in the world, how do I do more than justify complacency with gratitude?

There are even DEEPER questions under all of this. As people of faith, we often talk about the good gifts God has given us: people who love us, abilities we have, food, shelter, etc. Yet, when we attribute those good gifts to God, how do we make sense of people who are lonely, those with disabilities, people who doesn’t have food or shelter? Does our gratitude for what we do have blind us to the fact that God loves people without just as much as God loves us? How can we be grateful without being blind to the struggles of others of God’s children? How do we make sense of the different struggles people face? And how much do we attribute to God?

Do we want to claim that God gives all good gifts and that bad things in life are our own fault? Or the fault of society? Or of evil? Do we want to claim that God “has a plan” and that plan includes some people having and some not? Does all good come from God? And if so, why didn’t God attribute it more fairly? And where does the bad come from?

Furthermore, when does gratitude for one thing become a chain that binds people? For example, a person who is grateful to have enough income in their family is thus stuck in an abusive relationship by that very income?

All of this is to say that gratitude that is, I still think, the very core of our faith, can have a very complicated and noxious underbelly. While I worry about gratitude being a source of complacency, I also think that at its best gratitude can move us out of complacency. When we pay attention to what is GOOD in the world, we make space for more good. Sure, the good is often complicated, and needs further investigation. That needs to happen too. Nothing is pure, and we have to live in the complicated, even with gratitude. So, despite all the complications, may we pay attention and respond with gratitude! Amen

1Ronald Clements, Deuteronomy in the New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 2, (Nashville: Abingdon,1998) p. 356

2Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 109.

3Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: First Perennial Classics, 2001), p. 14

–

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 19, 2017

“The Merciful” based on 1 John 3:1-3 and Matthew…

  • November 5, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

There
is a timelessness to All Saints Sunday, similar to the spacelessness
to World Communion Sunday.  On World Communion Sunday, as the Table
of Christ feeds people around the whole world, we are able to connect
to our siblings in faith without distance separating us.  On All
Saints day we connect to those who went on before us, blessed us, and
entered the great cloud of witnesses.  I often think of the great
cloud of witnesses as being not just around us, but under us – they
are the ones on whose shoulders we stand.  

Some
of the saints we knew well, some of their names will be read today,
some of them predated us by too many years for us to know them by
name, and yet they form the great cloud of witnesses.  This reminds
us, as well, that we are here only for a brief period of time in the
work of the church.  Someday, we too, will be part of the cloud.  The
generations march ever onward.  The cloud will someday include us,
and those who aren’t even here yet!  The generations march ever
onward.  Today is a day of timelessness.

It
is also a day of timelessness in that grief slows down time, and time
can feel relentless.  On All Saints Day we don’t JUST remember those
who went on before us, and take a moment to acknowledge them, we also
notice the heartbreak of grief and attend to each other in our
heartbreak.  While it is wonderful to have a great cloud of witnesses
around us, most of us would rather have those we love right here with
us!  We are thankful to God for their lives, but usually we really
wish we were able to share more time with them!

There
is a deep holiness to the All Saints celebration, deep enough that
there is mystery in it as well.  In seeking to be faithful to the
lives of the Saints, the lectionary has given us rather mysterious
text as well.  It seems simple, until you try to make sense of it!
Here are the useful bits I’ve learned about these so called
Beatitudes:

  1. The
    verbs really matter.
  2. A
    bunch of the individual “blessings” are quotes from the Hebrew
    Bible.
  3. A
    lot of explanations exist to solve seeming contradictions

I’m
gonna explain each.  First of all, the verbs.  Those who speak Greek
say that a whole lot of effort is made into having the verbs be in
the form they’re in.  Namely, that the statements say blessed ARE,
but then indicate a future reality (mostly).  Furthermore, they
aren’t commandments, they are stated as facts.  Finally, according to
Feasting on the Word, “In
Psalm 1 the Hebrew word translated in our English text by our word
‘blessing’ is the word ’ashar,
which means in its literal sense ‘to find the right road’. … This
is the meaning of ‘ashar in the nine uses of ‘blessed’” in the
Beatitudes.”1
That means that these mean something like “You are on the right
road when you are poor in spirit.”2
Or, perhaps, “You who are merciful are on the right road, you will
receive mercy.”  So each line says “this group of people is on
the right road – and this is where it will lead them in the
future.”  These aren’t particularly normal verb constructions,
which is why they’re worth mentioning.

Now,
the Jesus Seminar thinks there is evidence to suggest that Jesus
likely said 4 of these blessings – because they show up in Luke and
Thomas.  Those are: the poor in Spirit, those who grieve, those who
hunger and thirst (for righteousness), and those who are persecuted.
They think Matthew filled in the rest as a way to uphold the early
Christian Community.3
In both cases, the blessings have striking Hebrew Bible roots.  

First
off, this text seems to be a reworking of Psalm 1, that being a Psalm
that talks about blessed people rather extensively (in the “to find
the right road” meaning).  Regarding comfort to mourners, which the
Jesus Seminar thinks goes back to Jesus, that sounds a whole lot like
Isaiah 61:1-3, “The
spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to
the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the
day of vengeance of our God; to
comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle
of praise instead of a faint spirit.”  Regarding meek inheriting,
which the Jesus Seminar thinks Matthew created,  we hear it in Psalm
37:11, “But
the meek shall inherit the land, and delight in abundant prosperity.”

As
a whole, the lists of qualities of people sound like lists in the
Hebrew Bible that relate to who can enter the temple!  There are
moral standards being held here, and they reflect the tradition they
grow from.  For example,

Psalm
15:1-5

1 O Lord,
who may abide in your tent?
   Who may dwell on
your holy hill? 
2 Those
who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
   and
speak the truth from their heart; 
3 who
do not slander with their tongue,
   and do no evil
to their friends,
   nor take up a reproach against
their neighbours; 
4 in
whose eyes the wicked are despised,
   but who
honour those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even
to their hurt; 
5 who do
not lend money at interest,
   and do not take a
bribe against the innocent. 
Those
who do these things shall never be moved.

Psalm
24:3-6 does the same.  So, Jesus is REWORKING, or REMOLDING his own
tradition, and then Matthew is doing the same.   Given those
realities, the really interesting pieces may be in what finally gets
included and excluded?  Why were the poor in spirit, those who mourn,
the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are
persecuted for righteousness the groups of people who fit?  Is it
because things were hard for peasants and things were hard for early
Christians?  Or is there something deeper?  (I don’t know, I’m just
wondering.)

Finally,
people have done a lot of work to try to understand this passage, as
it is one of the best known parts of the Bible while being rather
obscure.  The New Interpreter’s Bible has points out, “Peacemakers
does not connote a passive attitude, but positive actions for
reconciliation.”4
(180, NIB)  Marcus Borg explains some of the others:

“’Poor
in spirit’ almost certainly does not refer to well-to-do people who
are nevertheless spiritually poor, but to people whose material
poverty has broken their spirit.  Moreover, ‘righteousness’ in the
Bible and Matthew does not mean personal rectitude, as it most often
does in modern English, but justice.  ‘Those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness’  likely means ‘those who hunger and thirst
for justice.’  The meaning of
Mathew’s wording is thus similar and perhaps identical to what we
find in Luke, for it is the poor and hungry who yearn for justice.
In short, like the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes confirm that the
kingdom of God is both religious and political: it is God’s
kingdom, and it is a kingdom on earth
that involves a transformation of life for the poor and hungry.”5

Perhaps
that’s why these groups were included!  Taken
together, the work of scholars establishes that these are meaningful
phrases that fit into the rest of Jesus’ teaching, and that they
aren’t meant to just be a mystery!

So,
these really are powerful teachings.  As one scholar puts it, “In
none of the beatitudes is advice being offered for getting along in
this world, where mercy is more likely to be regarded as a sign of
weakness than to be rewarded in kind.”6
“Christianity is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose wight, advance
one’s career, or preserve one from illness.  Christian faith,
instead, is a way of living based on the firm and sure hope that
meekness is the way of God, that righteousness and peace will finally
prevail, and that God’s future will be a time of mercy and not
cruelty.”7
The Beatitudes continue in the tradition of differentiating the ways
of God – justice, righteousness, peace, well-being for all – with
the ways of the world.  The values the Beatitudes celebrate are not
at all the ones the world seeks, but they are the ones that build the
kin-dom.

On
All Saints we remember those who went on before us, and we remember
the ways that their lives followed God’s ways.  On All Saints we
remember that they have shown us the right road, and that in doing so
they made it easier for us to travel it.  We also remember that the
roads that we choose matter: they matter for the kin-dom itself, and
they matter for those who will come after us.  

It
is a good road, this one that Jesus describes, it is a very different
road than others we could also choose to walk.  It is a good thing we
have models who have walked the road ahead of us – and continue to
walk it with us as the great cloud of witnesses.  Amen  

– 

1Earl
F. Palmer “Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 5:1-12” in Feasting
on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara
Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY,
2011) 238.

2Palmer,
238.

3Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), page 138.

4M.
Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII: Matthew
Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995), page 180.

5Marcus
Borg, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary (HarperOne:
2015), 190-191.

6Boring,
179.

7Boring,
181.

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

“How to Love God” based on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-19…

  • October 29, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Sometimes
things are complicated, things like trying to build the kin-dom of
God for example.  This feels especially complicated when trying to
hold together awareness of many people, with many different needs,
and may varied experiences of oppression.  When Rev. Dr. Traci West
was here talking about “Grace and Race” she reminded us that when
we look at things intersectionally, the same people can be both
oppressed and oppressor, in different roles or realities they live.
Actually, it is more that we are all both, which we have to keep in
mind while also trying to get clear on how the systems work that
create and enforce the oppressions, so that we can be part of
changing them.

Sometimes
things are really complicated, like when we try to identify the
driving forces that are important in building a more just society,
and when we look at how deeply embedded how intricate the forces that
keep the status quo in place are.  Sometimes things are really
complicated, like when we try to imagine a world without hungry
people, and then we think about all the changes that would require.

And
then, in the midst of all the complications, come the simplest and
clearest commandments of the Bible. They can easily be remembered.
They leave minimal space for interpretation,  and there isn’t any
wiggle room in them.  Love God, and love your neighbor.  Follow up
question: who is my neighbor is easily answered: everyone.  Done

The
commandments offer a very simple explanation of the sort of love that
God wants from us: to love God the way God wants to be loved is to
love God’s people.  Its all very simple.

Yet,
every one of us who has tried to live these commandments knows they
get very complicated to live out, very quickly.  How is it that
something so simple and understandable is also so very difficult?

Thanks
goodness for Leviticus (things you might not have expected to hear –
ever).  As it is written in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “Leviticus
19 is one of the grand chapters of the whole book of Leviticus.  In
American Reform Judaism it is one of the most quoted and most often
read chapters, especially since it is assigned as the Torah reading
for Yom Kippur afternoon in that tradition.”1
If you are not familiar with Yom Kippur, it is the Holiest day in
the Jewish tradition, and is focused on atonement and repentance.
The Yom Kippur prayer of atonement is so vast and inclusive that I
find it exceptionally healing, by the time it is over it truly feels
as if the slate of past wrongdoings is wiped clean and we can start
anew.  

The
part of the chapter that we are focusing on today reflects on what it
means to love one’s neighbor, and the commandments it contains seem
to clarify what tends to go wrong!  By noticing how people are
instructed to do right, we can see what has gone wrong too
frequently.  

The
first part of the set of instructions are about how to care for
people who live in poverty, and they are consistent with other
passages in the Torah.  As one commentator puts it, this set of
instructions

“seeks
to help poor people by legislating that the three chief products of
agriculture – the grain, the product of the vine, and the fruit of
the trees, are not to be harvested entirely; some is to be left for
poor people to glean.  … the Lord is the ultimate owner of
everything; thus the land is a gift from the Lord.  If the landowners
are only stewards of the land and all that it produces, there is no
reason to be selfish and stingy. … Disadvantaged persons have a
right to harvest the edges of the fields; they are not to depend on
voluntary gifts alone.”2

In
modern terms, I wonder if the comparison is to be made to welfare,
and other assistance that comes through the Department of Social
Services.  The comparison isn’t perfect, gleaning the field was seen
as a human right, however it does compare well to the idea that there
needs to be a way to provide for the basic needs of life for all
people, and that on top of those very basic needs there will be need
for further support.  (Please note the video on Sustain and the idea
that those who are getting help from DSS are still struggling to
access basic necessities of life.)

That
idea that all that is, is God’s, and that we are to use it
appropriately is one of the most humbling ideas in our faith.  Do we
do it?  How well?  What would God have us be doing with our resources
that we aren’t doing?  How have things gotten to where they are?  

The
second bit of instruction deals with truth; there are commands not to
steal, not to deal falsely, not to lie, and not to swear falsely in
the name of God.  Apparently these are also common issues in all of
humanity, the temptation to take what isn’t ours or tell untruths for
our own benefit.  Their inclusion in this passage is notable though:
to seek a benefit from an untruth means taking that benefit from
someone else. It is not to act as we would wish others would act
towards us.  

The
third set of instructions seems to focus on balancing power.  In
particular the instructions are against fraud and against stealing.
Then comes yet another instruction that seems to be timeless: “you
shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.”
Laborers were usually living day to day, using the labor of the day
to buy the day’s bread.  By keeping it for just a bit longer, the
person who didn’t pay on time would be keeping a person from their
daily food.  This has compassion for the poorest workers.  Finally,
the instructions condemn taking advantage of a person’s disability
(and I’d expect this expands to any weakness).  Specially it says not
to speak harshly to a deaf person nor attempt to trip a blind person.
In summation, this part of loving our neighbors as ourselves seems
to be about not taking advantage of anyone just because we can.  

The
fourth part of this set of instructions
worries about “just judgements” and in particular the
availability of justice to people who are poor.  This is practically
an obsession of the Torah.  It is as if there is something inherent
in human nature that biases people toward partiality, towards giving
the rich and powerful more wealth and more power while taking it away
from the impoverished and disempowered.  I don’t much like thinking
about humanity that way, but I can’t see any other reason why the
Bible would spend SO much effort trying to correct for it.
Furthermore, I suppose, that when dealing with justice in combination
with wealth and power, any human could come face to face with a
self-preservation instinct.  A wealthy person who is displeased might
be capable of significant harm.  Perhaps it is just self-preservation
that makes it possible that all justice systems need constant
reminders and corrections to ensure that justice serves the poor and
the wealthy equally well.  It is distributing however, that the
issues that exist today in our nation’s justice system are neither
new nor unique, but reflect a problem with humanity itself.  That may
mean it is will be quite reticent to correction.
#Schooltoprisionpipeline #privateprisons

The
final set of instructions about neighborliness in Leviticus 19 is a
bit surprising.  It explicitly states that to love your neighbor
means you can’t hate them.  That may be a lot harder than it sounds.
It also says that you have to call them to account when their
behavior isn’t loving.  That’s definitely harder than it sounds.
Then we’re told not to seek revenge AND not to hold grudges.  Then
this part of the passage seamlessly draws itself to a conclusion, the
one we already knew was coming, “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.”  

One
thing seems true, the last few millennia haven’t seen much change in
human behavior.  The explicit instructions in Leviticus about what
loving our neighbors looks like hold up well to the test of time.

So
what do we do with these easy to understand, difficult to enact
commandments?  We could discuss further instruction, but that hasn’t
yet proven productive.  We could offer inspiring stories, but I think
that’s been done enough.  I wonder if our time is better spent
considering what holds us back from loving our neighbors, and what we
might do to overcome those barriers.

Now,
this list is just my best guesses (I’m a little sad we don’t’ have a
sermon talk-back so I can hear what you’d add or remove), the things
that make it hard for us to love our neighbors:  fear of our own
deaths (“existential anxiety”) and an instinct toward self
preservation, combined with believing in the myth of scarcity;
in-group thinking and fear of others; and finally a lack of love for
ourselves.  (If the commandment is to love our neighbors AS
ourselves, it implies we are also supposed to be good at loving
ourselves!)  That isn’t a terribly extensive list, I was attempting
to be as clear like the commandments themselves 😉

If
you are willing to take a homework assignment, I’d encourage you to
spend some time considering if the list above feels true in your
experience, and then to consider what things make you more
susceptible to those challenges to loving our neighbors and which
make it easier for you to overcome them and love your neighbors well.
The answers to those questions are pretty important, especially if
we’re all willing to work on them.

For
me, there are two key pieces to overcoming those challenges, two
things that help me truly love our neighbors.  The first is quiet
time to soak in God’s love and hear my own inner voice, and the
second is having opportunities to learn about the world and to
connect with people – especially those whose lives have been
radically different from mine.  To start at the beginning for this,
when I’m tired, or drained, or anxious, I’m not very loving –
including to myself.  While sleep and also good food matter, the key
to keeping myself from getting drained is taking time for my
spiritual well-being.  For me, at my best, this means an HOUR a day
spent in contemplative prayer, although the particular form of the
prayer isn’t consistent.  When I stop all the doing and just listen –
both to God and myself – I’m more centered, more loving, more
focused, and waaaaaaaaaay less anxious.

At
the same time, one of the great dangers of trying to “Love our
neighbors as ourselves” is misunderstanding what love looks like
for a particular person or group of people.  If I don’t understand
the problem, and if I don’t take the time to listen to the one(s)
struggling, then the love I try to share may end up doing more harm.
Also, I really like learning, connecting, and trying to understand
the world and its people.

What
guides you?  What helps you be more loving?  I know some of you need
forests, others need music, others need exercise – and for many of
you, I don’t know!  If you do know what you need to be more loving
the next question is: are you DOING it?  I think God would appreciate
it if we spent our time doing the things that help us be more loving
toward our neighbors, in fact, I think that’s how we best love God.
Amen

1Walter
C. Kaiser, “Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections on
Leviticus” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume One
, Leander E. Keck, editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1994) p. 1131.

2Kaiser,
1133.

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 29, 2017

“Image of God” based on Isaiah 45:1-6 and Matthew 22:15-22

  • October 22, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

The Bible often sounds
so… Bible-y that it can be easy to tune out.  Or, at least, it can
be for me.  Sometimes when I’m reading I’m tempted to “yadda yadda”
the stuff that feels like its been said over and over.  This is
similar to trying to read legalese and make sense of the actual
point, which I know is there somewhere, but I have to break through
ALL the words that don’t actually mean anything to me.

I mention this because
I’m not entirely convinced I’m the only person with this problem, and
because I think many a normal person might have had this issue with
our Hebrew Bible text today.  Yes yes, God opens doors, God levels
mountains, God gives riches, God calls us by name, God chooses the
chosen, God is the only one.  We’ve heard all this before, it is
practically a chorus.

The big difference in
this passage, the part that makes it not at all redundant nor boring,
comes in the very beginning.  “Thus
says the LORD to his anointed.”  (I KNOW, you are half tempted to
zone out the Bible-ese already, but I promise, you want to hear the
next two words) “to Cyrus”.  This, my friends, is some crazy turn
of a phrase.  

A
quick set of historical reminders is in order to make sense of it
though.  Around 587 to 586 BCE the Jewish people living in Jerusalem
were defeated by the Babylonian army, and the city and temple were
destroyed.  The leaders and the educated were taken to Babylon as
slaves and the rest of the people were left behind without defenses,
food, or hope.  This is known as “the Exile” and we believe that
the Hebrew Bible as we know it was written down during and after the
Exile, which means the stories were told in particular ways to try to
answer the question “Why did this happen to us?”  In fact, the
very idea of a Jewish Messiah developed at the time of the Exile, as
a person who would right the wrong of the Exile itself and recreate a
vibrant Jewish Empire.

The
Exile ended when the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonian Empire in
battle, and took it over.  The Emperor of the Persian Empire then
decided that he didn’t much care about the Jewish captives, and freed
them to go home as they wished.  It had, however, been 48 years,
which is several generations without birth control, and not everyone
went home.

Back
to our passage, do you know who was the Emperor of the Persian Empire
in 539 and let the captives go free?  Cyrus.  So, this passage, which
is the first one to claim anyone as the Messiah (“God’s anointed”),
claims that role for a FOREIGN, NON-JEWISH, EMPEROR.  Well, now,
that’s pretty curious, isn’t it?  This stuff isn’t all just
Bible-ese.  😉

The
idea here is that by freeing God’s people, Cyrus was doing God’s
work.  But the claims are rather radical.  First of all, Cyrus is
called the messiah, then Cyrus is said to be called by name by God,
and to be given a last name by God EVEN THOUGH Cyrus doesn’t know or
worship God.  So, the work of freeing the people was done through the
work of Cyrus, and God helped Cyrus along the way to make it happen.


The
most curious part is that God used an EMPEROR, which doesn’t tend to
be the way God works, at least when we get to the Gospels.  However,
the fantastic thing we can take from the Isaiah passage is this: God
doesn’t limit God’s work just to people who believe particular things
or speak of God in particular ways; God is willing to work with and
through anyone who is open to working with God!  The fact that this
was clear enough in 539 BCE that the people of God thought Cyrus was
God’s chosen messiah is very good news indeed.  Inclusivity runs deep
with God, and God’s people have known it for a long time.

Now,
Matthew is distinctly less enamored with foreign emperors than Isaiah
is.  Matthew sets up this story beautifully, designing a narrative
around the snappy statement of Jesus which said, “Give therefore to
the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things
that are God’s.”  That little saying is one of the very few things
the Jesus Seminar REALLY thinks Jesus said, and Matthew builds a
story around it to make sense of it.  The story is well constructed.
The coin described has on it the face of the Emperor, while our faith
tradition has always claimed that people have on them the “image of
God.”  Matthew even word plays this, having the adversaries
describe Jesus as a man who shows no partiality, which is literally,
“you do not regard the face of anyone.”1
The whole story then plays around with faces, and images, wondering
whose matches with whose.

While
Matthew’s story is well constructed, we think the authentic memory is
simply in that statement, “Give therefore to the emperor the things
that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  
That statement seems to direct us to a reasonable follow up question:
What is it that belongs to Caesar and what is it that belongs to
God?  In fact, I think it is this question that makes the statement
so powerful and memorable.  It appears benign, and would have sounded
benign to Roman ears.  They might have thought, “Yeah, sure, give
money to the Emperor, that’s really what he wants, and as long as he
also gets the power and respect he deserves, your God can have what’s
left.”

Jewish
ears would not have heard the same thing at all.  They would have
heard Jesus and immediately considered, “But, if we are to give to
God what is God’s, there is nothing left for the emperor!”  So,
Jesus’ saying manages to totally subvert the power of the empire
WHILE sounding benign to the emperor’s ears.  Well played, Jesus.  

So,
for a faithful Jewish person at the time of Jesus as today, all
things belong to God.  That’s one of the implications of thinking of
God as Creator, God created all things and all things are thus God’s.
The less obvious follow up question is: what does it mean to give
something to God who is already the Creator of all things?  I don’t
mean to be trite, I think this is a valid question.  We might have a
sense of being able to “give our hearts” to God, but we aren’t
just looking for that.  We certainly have the capacity to give money
to the church, and to other groups whose work builds the kin-dom of
God, which can be a way to give to God, but if God is the God of
EVERYTHING and we are to give what is God’s to God, then… how?

Jesus
doesn’t clarify.  As the Jesus seminar puts it, he leaves that as
homework, “He does not tell his questioners what to do other than
to decide the claims of God in relation to the claims of the
emperor.”2
As far as I can figure it out, to give something to God is to use it
for the building of God’s kin-dom; or sometimes that’s called God’s
kingdom; that is, to create the world into the world as God would
have it be; that is, a world where everyone has enough to survive AND
thrive; that is, a world of justice that allows for peace; that is a
reality where all people are humanized and no one is left
dehumanized; some call this the beloved community.   I know that’s a
lot of rephrasing, but we Christians find this idea important enough
that we talk about it in a lot of ways, and it seems important to
point out that they’re all the SAME idea.  

In
seminary I was offered the idea that we are co-creators with God.
That is, God created, but in that creation we received free will and
that free will is a part of creating what is and what will come next.
If the kin-dom is to come, then we need to be co-creators with God
in making it happen, because God will not work without us nor force
it upon us.  I’m proposing that to “give to God” is to offer it
for the sake of the kin-dom.  Resources I see all us as having
include:  our time, our energy, our mental though space, our money,
our gifts, and our passions.  None of us have any of those in equal
measure, but we all have the chance to decide what to do with them.  

There
is a heck of a lot of work to be done in building the kin-dom as
well, and the work is quite varied.  Paul did some good work on
making lists of various gifts that are useful and various work that
is to be done, but the end point is that we need lots of different
skill sets and we need not judge ourselves nor others for what we’re
able to offer.  

As
a practical example, when the area I was in flooded in 2011 I was
asked to do some organizing work, because the fire department was
busy emptying basement and the fire auxiliary was busy trying to
distribute food and water.  So I sat at the fire department and made
lists: lists of people who wanted to help and lists of people who
needed help.  To be honest, I’m not all that useful at most building
or demolishing work, I don’t know all that much about it.  However,
it turned out that a deeply necessary job was the one that involved
keeping lists and making phone calls.  It was more than a year before
I lifted my hand with anything but a pen or a phone in it for that
recovery, and yet I got enough feedback to know that the work I’d
done mattered.  At the same time, nothing I did would have mattered
if there weren’t people willing to do the heavy lifting, nor others
working to get supplies, nor if the people working to restore the
utilities hadn’t succeeded, nor if the basements weren’t drained, nor
if the people hadn’t had food and water in the meantime.

I
think perhaps disaster recovery is a decent metaphor for building the
kin-dom if anything is: it takes a lot of people doing what they are
best at, some of which may not seem that important, much of which is
mucking out,  but all of which together can transform it all!  

Another
practical example seems to be in order.  Many in this congregation
have been doing the long term work for full inclusion of LGBTQIA+
people in the church and in the world.  That requires a lot of
different effort: from strategy work to protests, from legal work to
acts of defiance, from the the “work” of celebration to the
simple acts of inclusion, and beyond.  A few years ago a friend
mentioned the deeply necessary work of having initial conversations
with people who are closed minded, or who are having their very first
thoughts that perhaps God loves LBGTQIA+ people too –  and that she
no longer feels called to do it.  She is an incredible organizer, we
really need her organizing rather than in those conversations, and
she was wise enough to know continuing to be in those talks decade
after decade was too much for her.  Her stance felt like freedom.  We
don’t all have to do the same work, there is too much to do to be
stuck on only one thing!

So, to give to God’s what
is God’s, what does it mean?  It means our whole lives being directed
towards co-creating the fullness of God’s vision into the world.  The
really good news is that when we are working along with God, the
burden is lightened and the possibilities are expanded.  Thanks be to
God!  Amen

1Richard
E. Spalding, Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 22:15-22,
Feasting on the Word Year
A, Volume 4,
edited by David L. Barlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 189.

2Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The
Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), 236.

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 22, 2017

“Bread for the World” based on Isaiah 25:1-9

  • October 16, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

In 2005 I was commissioned as a probationary Elder in The United Methodist Church, and immediately thereafter I went to Cuba on a Volunteer in Mission Trip (VIM). Cuba was fascinating and the trip was meaningful and educational. We started and ended our time in Cuba at the Methodist Hospitality House in Havana. On our last night, we were to have closing worship and the other clergy on the trip informed me that I was to preside at the communion table (for the first time). As a seminary student, I’d been involved in a lot of conversations about bread and grape juice; particularly around the idea that the the bread and wine that Jesus had used were the common elements of food for the people of his day, and that in places where bread and grape juice are not common food, perhaps they should not be the elements of communion. I found it convincing, particularly after having learned that grape juice is SUPER expensive in Cuba as grapes are not native and embargoes limit trade.

Thus, I decided to preside over the table with the elements of the people: salines and mango juice. Once our Cuban hosts heard about this, they wanted to partake as well. So, in one of those strikingly holy moments of life, I stood as an American woman in a rooftop in Havana, and presided over a bilingual communion service with salines and mango juice.

Not so long after that, I was back at school and back at my pastoral internship, helping to serve a Thanksgiving meal at the Hollywood UMC. It was a Sunday night, and the large room was filled with tables and the tables were filled with people. After serving most of the crowd, I looked up. What I saw took my breath away. It was the church’s Thanksgiving Dinner, so many of the people who were present were church members; but they also made all meals open to the community, so many of those present were people who were homeless and hungry. The two crowds were intermingled at each table, sitting together and sharing a meal. The tables were diverse in other ways as well: age, race, country of origin, sexual orientations, gender identities, and even religious faith. On that day when I looked up and saw God’s beloved people talking, laughing, and eating together I knew I’d seen the kin-dom of God on earth (if only for a moment).

Somewhere along the line, those two powerful moments have bonded in my brain, the communion meal intermingled with the shared meal of church fellowship that also fed the hungry. Perhaps they were tied together by the reflections of Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green, who often speaks about the ways that God’s Table (communion) invokes and also blesses the tables we share fuller meals at. Food is sacred, shared food even more so, and whether it is meals that fill the belly or tiny pieces of bread meant to satiate the soul, they matter.

Isaiah shares a vision of God in our reading today, and it is one that invokes and expands both of the stories I just told you. In this passage God prepares a table, a feast actually, of rich foods that would nourish bodies, and invites ALL people from ALL nations to the feast. God makes the food, for God’s people, and all can eat together. It is so spectacular, so marvelous, that it makes sense that within such a God-drenched experience that God would also bring an end to death and bring God’s presence fully to the people.

Abundant, life-giving food, prepared for ALL people by God’s own self is equivalent, it seems, to swallowing up death itself.

This is not the world we live in. (Sorry to break it to you.) Death is here, still. Abundant, life-giving food is not available to all of God’s people, and while the presence of God may be here with us, we often don’t feel drenched in its goodness. According to the resources provided by Bread for the World, “Nearly 15 percent of U.S. households — approximately 49 million Americans, including 15.9 million children — struggle to put food on the table.”1 The problem is not limited to the United States. They also share, “The number of hungry people in Asia has also declined substantially, by 217 million between 1990-92 and 2012-14, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Yet Asia still has to two-thirds of the world’s hungry people.” Specifically, “More than 40 percent of children in India are stunted (being too short for their age group) due to malnutrition.” The other area of the world in greatest need is sub-Saharan Africa, “Just over a quarter of the world’s undernourished people live in the countries south of the Sahara Desert in Africa. Progress against hunger has been slow in this region. In 1990, one in three people in the region were undernourished. Today, one in four suffer from hunger”.2 “All added up, worldwide, 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty—on less than $1.25 per day.”3 This is WAY down from the recent past, but still unacceptable.

Bread for the world links to the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, which include the information that “In 2016, an estimated 155 million children under age 5 were stunted (low height for their age), down from 198 million in 2000, ”4 and “The proportion of undernourished people worldwide declined from 15 per cent in 2000-2002 to about 11 per cent in 2014-2016. … Globally, about 793 million people were undernourished in 2014-2016, down from 930 million in 2000-2002.”5 The decline in global hunger is a great thing, but it is still way too much.

We don’t live in a world where abundant, life-giving food is available to all of God’s people, not at all. And while global poverty and hunger was on the decline this year (praise God!), within the United States it rose, and is expected to keep rising. In previous years we have participated in the Bread for the World offering of Letters, asking our state and federal elected officials to pass expansive legislation to make food available to hungry people, this year we are aware that it will fall on deaf ears. We aren’t fighting to expand programs to hungry people anymore, we are now fighting to keep resources that exist, insufficient though they are.

It is especially difficult right now, in the US and in the world, because the impacts of Global Climate change are drastically impacting food production, droughts and floods, wars and migration, transportation and food prices. All of this means that access to abundant, life-giving food is very difficult for many. Thanks be to God for the many organizations committed to finding ways to get food to hungry people, and thanks be to God that in the world at large there was a DECLINE in hunger despite these extra challenges!!

Isaiah’s dream, however, still feels far off. I want to retell you the dream, in slightly different language, because I think we all need to soak in it a bit.

Our God, the one who never abandons us, the one who holds us together,
We remember all that you have done,
all the acts of liberation, and justice,
all the ways you’ve sparked creativity, nurtured love, and healed brokenness.
You have acted, and you have guided us to destroy the fortresses of oppression,
and you ensure they will never be rebuild.
The powers that deny anyone’s humanity are over.
The systems that privilege one over another are no more.
Awe has struck all of us, the strong and the weak alike, at what you can do.
You have reminded us of your values, and brought them to life.
You are the sanctuary for the poor,
the one who is safe shelter to those in need and in despair,
protection from from hurricanes and rainstorms,
a fireproof haven from the sun and from the fires,
a sturdy foundation that not even an earthquake can harm.
When the powerful attacked the weak,
like a blizzard attacking a disintegrating home,
when the cries of those calling for injustice
seemed to drown out the voices calling for justice,
you acted.
You provided reinforcements and insulation for the homes,
you reminded those calling for injustice of their own needs,
and they stopped yelling and started listening.
Here, here in this place,
this place that has known such tragedy,
fear, anger, sadness, and despair,
here in this place you will give gifts to all your people.
One will sit by another, and no characteristic of humanity will separate them.
Here, in this place, you feed us all with delicious food,
nourishing us, healing us, reminding us of goodness once again.
Here, in this place,
comfort will be shared,
tears will be dried,
shame will be destroyed,
and death itself will lose its power to frighten us or bring us pain.
Knowing that this will happen, let us be glad and rejoice in the goodness.

Commentators say that this vision won’t necessarily come true exactly as written. #spoileralert Yet, I’m told that we can’t be part of creating what we can’t dream of, and we can’t see what we can’t conceive of. In the midst of the brokenness all around us, we need reminders of what goodness looks like, what hope would create if it could, what dreams God is dreaming over the long run. Some of us (me included) are so busy being concerned about the present that we lose sight of the idea that God is very good at playing a very long game.

So, bread for the world, that’s the dream. All people being fed with abundant, life-giving food. Isaiah says not just bread but delicious soups and sauces, not just food but drink as well. No one going hungry, no one in need, not in body nor in soul.

That’s one of God’s dreams, and it is surely a God sized dream.  Bread for the World and the United Nations are actually dreaming it with God, the goal is to eliminate hunger in the world by 2030. They say it is going more slowly than the hoped – but it is GOING. God’s dreams might just be in reach, this one and all the rest as well. May we take the time to soak in the goodness of God’s dreams, to trust in the visions God has for an abundant and just world, and give our attention to what might be – God is so good the dreams and visions are nourishing for us. Amen

1Bread for the World “About Hunger” http://www.bread.org/where-does-hunger-existaccessed on 10/12/17.

2Grassroots Advocacy Resources, Facts on Hunger and Poverty,http://www.bread.org/sites/default/files/downloads/gar-issues-poverty-hunger-us.pdfaccessed on 10/12/17.

3Grassroots Advocacy Resources

4United Nations, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017,https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2017/TheSustainableDevelopmentGoalsReport2017.pdf accessed on 10/12/17.

5United Nations

–

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 15, 2017

“The Power of Nonviolence” based on Isaiah 5:1-7 and Matthew…

  • October 8, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

As
my paternal grandmother (Nana) aged, she needed increasing levels of
help.  After she’d transitioned to assisted living, her beloved only
son (my father) would often take her out on shopping excursions.  My
Nana was a woman who loved to shop, ok, she was a woman who lived to
shop.  It regularly amused me to talk to both my father and my Nana
after said excursions.  My Nana would relate the experiences this
way, “Your father is SO impatient!  All I wanted to do was go to a
few stores, look at what they had, and enjoy being out.  All he
wanted was to get out of there.  It is like he doesn’t know how to
have any fun!”  My father would relate the experiences this way,
“Your grandmother takes forever!  I took her to the store, she
wanted me to push her down each of the the aisles, slowly, and then
when we were done she’d want to do it again!”

Their
two versions of shopping together always made me giggle because it
was so clear that they were relating the same story, just from two
different experiences. I’ve been thinking about their shopping
excursions this week because the Gospel does the opposite.

As
far as I can figure it out, what we have in the Gospel is one story
being used for two totally different purposes at the same time
(without changing perspectives).  One of these stories is the
narrative that Jesus told and the other is the one that the early
Christian community told, and they told them for VERY different
reasons.

Since
we are are much more familiar with the one the early Christian
community told, and since it is the version we see in the Gospel
today, we’re going to start by looking at that one.  It is
brilliantly done, poetically beautiful, and intended to insult the
Jews.  SIGH.  As the Jesus Seminar puts it, “This
parable was a favorite in early Christian circles because it could
easily be allegorized [to the story where] God’s favor was
transferred from its original recipients (Israel) to its new heirs
(Christians, principally gentiles).”1
This version intentionally reflections on Isaiah 5:1-7.  They start
in parallel ways, with the description of the creation of the
vineyard: planting, enclosing, digging, building a watch tower.  The
parallels in the beginning of the passages are intended to remind us
of the conclusion of the Isaiah reading, which says (in case you
forgot), “[God] expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness,
but heard a cry!” (Isaiah 5:7b, NRSV)

In
Isaiah the shock is that after all that work (and it takes years to
get grapes from the vineyard), the grapes were sour.  The metaphor
indicates that God had invested in creating a just society with
Israel and is horrified that they didn’t become one.  Matthew extends
this metaphor, indicating that he thinks the Jews failed to create a
just society, but that the Christians will succeed.  In the
allegorical reading of the parable, God will kick out the tenants and
replace them.  It seems that this reflects a time when Christians
were feeling disempowered and felt the need to tell stories that
empowered them.  The problem is that for a whole lot of centuries
now, Christians have been the empowered and by continuing to tell
themselves this story they have disempowered Jewish people and
perpetuated antisemitism.

We
can be clear that the Matthew version is the creation of the
Christian community and not Jesus because it includes the detail
about the son being killed and cast off.  Ched Myers writes, “The
son is killed and cast off (without proper burial, the ultimate
insult) Jesus too will be cast ‘outside’ the city of Jerusalem.”2

The
good news is that scholars think they can get a good guess at how the
original parable sounded, the one Jesus told.  This is the other
version of the parable, and it wasn’t allegorical.  William Herzog
points out the version in Matthew is quite different from others,
saying,  “The parable begins with a description of a man creating a
vineyard yet neither Luke nor the Gospel of Thomas include these
details.”3
That means that the original parable wasn’t meant to be an extension
of Isaiah 5, and likely wasn’t intending to dismiss the Jews.  The
Gospel of Thomas version is thought to be the closest to what Jesus
might actually have said:

“He
said, A […] person owned a vineyard and rented it to some
farmers, so they could work it and he could collect its crop from
them.  He sent his slave so the farmers would give him the vineyard’s
crop.  They grabbed him, beat him, and almost killed him, and the
slave returned and told his master.  His master said, “Perhaps
he didn’t know them.”  He sent another slave, and the farmers
beat that one as well.  Then the master sent his son and said,
“Perhaps they’ll show my son some respect.”  Because the
farmers knew that he was the heir to the vineyard, they grabbed him
and killed him.”4

This
parable seems to describe something that might have actually happened
during Jesus life time.  It reflects tensions that were present in
Galilee at that time.  In the Social Science Commentary they write,
“If we may assume that at the earliest stage of the Gospel
tradition the story was not an allegory about God’s dealings with
Israel, as it is now, it may well have been a warning to absentee
landowners expropriating and exporting the produce of the land.”5
Another commentator concludes, “And however the vengeance of the
owner may be interpreted allegorically, it certainly reflects a
landowner’s wrath, which which the landless Palestinian was all too
familiar.”6

So
the problem in the parable according to Herzog is “the creation of
a vineyard would, on economic grounds alone, have disturbed the
hearers of the parable.  Because land in Galilee was largely
accounted for and intensively cultivated, ‘a man’ could acquire the
land required to build a vineyard only by taking it from someone
else.  The most likely way he would have added the land to his
holdings was through foreclosure on loans to free peasant farmers who
were unable to pay off the loans because of poor harvests.”7
This means that “building vineyards was a ‘speculative investment’
and therefore the prerogative of the rich.”8
So the parable reflects economic realities that were doing GREAT
harm in Galilee at the time of Jesus.  

It
also reflected a reality of violence at the time of Jesus.  Herzog
continues, “If the peasants resorted to violence only when their
subsistence itself was threatened then the conversion of land from
farmland to a vineyard ([Mark] 12:1b, 2) would be an event that would
trigger such a response.  The building of the vineyard and the
violence it generates also describes the conflict of two value
systems.  Elites continually sought to expand their holdings and add
to their wealth at the expense of the peasants.”9
 So, the creation of new vineyards was part of a system of wealth
transformation from the subsistence peasants to the very wealthy.
Herzog then seems this as step one in a spiral of violence that went
like this:

“The
spiral begins in the everyday oppression and exploitation of the poor
by the ruling class.This violence is often covert and sanctioned by
law, such as the hostile takeover of peasant land.  More often than
not, peasants simply adjust and adapt to these incursions by the
elites in order to maintain their subsistence standard; but… even
peasants have a breaking point.  When their very subsistence is
threatened, they will revolt.  This is the second phrase of the
spiral of violence, and it is this phase that the parable depicts in
great detail.  Inevitably, such rebellions or revolts are repressed
through the use of force, as the final question of the parable
suggests.  This officially sanctioned violence defines the final
phase of the spiral of violence, which always occurs ‘under the
pretext of safeguarding public order [or] national security.”10

I
have, to this point, been following the commentaries of multiple
brilliant scholars: ones who differentiated the current form of the
parable from the one Jesus likely told, ones that explain the
economic factors of vineyards, ones that connect economic systems
with violence.   However, first I’m going to draw my own conclusion,
one that none of them came around to.

To
get there, I want to go back to a seemingly simple point John Dominic
Crossan made while he was here.  He mentioned that Jesus was killed
for being a non-violent revolutionary, and we know this because he
was killed alone instead of being killed with all of his followers
like he would have been if he’d led a violent revolt.  John Dominic
Crossan is one of many scholars who think that Jesus was very
intentionally nonviolent, and that was a definitional characteristic
of his movement.  I agree with them.  

My
suspicion is that if Jesus told this story, he told it to talk about
violent resistance and nonviolent resistance.  He would have told
this story to point out that violence tends to beget violence, and to
offer an alternative. The spiral of violence: taking away people’s
livelihoods, killing in self-defense, repressed rebellions was NOT
the vision Jesus had for the people.  By naming how things tend to go
down in the world, by talking about how others were choosing to act,
he would have been differentiating his movement from theirs.  

The
answer to Matthew’s question at the end of the parable, “Now when
the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
is that the owner would either kill them directly or displace them
without any resources to allow them to die slowly.  In the
allegorical version of the story when God becomes the landowner,
that’s disgusting.  However, if Jesus’ intention was to point out how
the world works and
offer an alternative,
it
is worth listening to.

This
week, it seems worth remembering that we are followers of a man who
lived in a time of violence, who choose nonviolence and invited
others to choose nonviolence with him.  John Dominic Crossan invited
us to remember that there is power in nonviolence too, and that is a
power of the followers of Christ.  The empire that perpetuated
violence in the of Jesus killed only him because they thought the
threat of violence would kill his movement, but it failed.
Nonviolent resistance could not be stopped so easily.

The
question for today is how we practice nonviolent resistance in the
ways that Jesus did: which were pointed, powerful, and effective in
caring for the vulnerable people of God.  This week has felt
overwhelming:  paying attention to yet another mass murder, learning
more and more about the ways that the people of Puerto Rico have been
systematically impoverished, and watching as another large swath of
people prepare for yet another hurricane.  Nonviolent resistance
takes intentionality, focus, communication, collaboration,
creativity, and commitment.  But it has brought justice to this world
time and time again. (If you need an example, the Civil Rights
Movement in this country is the most accessible, but the list is
really quite long).  The next successful movements for justice will
be wise to follow the same method that Jesus used: nonviolent
resistance.  For that I hope we can all say: Thanks be to God.  Amen

1
Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), pages 510.

2
Ched Myers, Binding
the Strong Man
( Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), page 309.

3
William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech,
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), p. 101.

4Gospel
of Thomas 65:1-7, Scholars Version.

5
Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 110.

6
Myers, 309.

7
Herzog, 102.

8
Herzog, 103.

9
Herzog, 107-108.

10
Herzog, 108-109, working with work from Helder Camara, 1971.

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 8, 2018

“Enough” based on Exodus 17:1-7 and Philippians 2:1-5

  • October 1, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Not
to give the answer away or anything, but I think both of these
passages try to prod us toward trust; trust in God and trust in each
other.  Exodus tells of God giving the people what they need,
Philippians instructs people to take care of each other (which is a
way of ensuring everyone’s needs are met, if it is done well).  When
people are paying attention to each other, and to the ones who are
most vulnerable, God’s abundant creation is able to care for all.  I
suspect that trusting in God requires two things of us:  trusting in
each other, and being trust worthy for each other.  Let’s take a
deeper look.  

The
Exodus story is about the people of God being quarrelsome, whiny, and
unfaithful.  Or, at least, it seems to be.  I’ve never quite
understood this passage though, because they’re said by the text
itself to be quarrelsome, whiny, and unfaithful BECAUSE they want
access to water, and are afraid that they are about to die of thirst.
Just as a reminder, they are wandering around a desert.  In fact, in
the Bible, the words desert and wilderness are functionally
interchangeable, and they both indicate that the land is not capable
of sustaining human life without God’s help.

The
people are in the desert without water, and they ask for water, and
that’s unfaithful?  I don’t follow.  It doesn’t seem unfaithful that
the people in Puerto Rico are asking for water, water is necessary
for life, and they don’t have water.  They need more than water, but
they desperately need water.  Just like the people in the desert.  In
both cases, asking for water doesn’t make them whiny, or quarrelsome.
It makes them alive, and wanting to stay alive!  Being without water
is dangerous to life!  Articulating that it is a problem and asking
for help finding a solution is reasonable, rational, and wise.  

Regarding
Exodus, I don’t think the people misbehave nearly as much as Moses
does.  The people notice there isn’t water and ask for water.   Now,
if we want to defend Moses we can say that they don’t ask terribly
politely (“Give us water to drink.”) but within the story itself
Moses has preformed a heck of a lot of miracles already and has
claimed to be leading the people.  They don’t know why he hasn’t
dealt with this already.  If the leader isn’t taking care of the
people’s needs, the people need not be POLITE in demanding what they
need to live.  

Moses
responds poorly.  He takes their request personally.  He asks why
they are quarreling with him and why they are testing God.  Clearly
we can now see whose perspective is dominating the interpretation of
the story!  (Maybe this is why the tradition has said Moses wrote
this book… 😉 )  His angry response and accusation quiet the people
momentarily, but they are still thirsty.  They still need water, for
life.  So they can’t be silenced.  The second time they ask for water
with significantly more drama, perhaps hoping that it will elicit a
different response.  They are desperate, indicating that dying of
dehydration in the desert is worse than slavery in Egypt.  

Moses,
again, mishears them.  He turns to God, but not to advocate for the
people, to advocate for himself!  He prays, crying out that he
doesn’t know how to handle the people and they’re so angry with him
he is afraid for his life.  #MissingThePoint  The story says that God
does NOT miss the point though, and responds with a way to provide
water.  Moses does as he’s told, and the people get water.  However,
the narrative ends with Moses naming the place “Quarreling” and
“Testing” as his interpretation of how the people behaved.  

According
to Deuteronomy, the entire story of the people wandering in the
desert is said to be so that they can learn to depend on God, and not
on their own capacities. Deuteronomy, in fact, spends a lot of time
worrying that once the people enter the land and have milk and honey
in abundance they will think this is because of their hard work,
rather than God’s good grace.  Thus, the Exodus narratives are meant
to teach that God can be depended on.

This
is both an imperative lesson for all people of faith, and a dangerous
one.  God can be depended on, this I believe.  Creation is abundant,
and there is enough food, water, shelter, and love for everyone.
However, I haven’t found human societies to be as dependable as God,
and while there is enough in the world, there is not enough if it is
hoarded, or wasted.  Abundant clean water is being destroyed by
fracking, sources of it are drying up with global climate change, and
various companies are seeking to glean profit from limiting people’s
water access except through their sales.  Analysis I’ve read about
the humanitarian crisis in Syria that has created a refugee crisis
around the world suggests that it started with years of drought that
kept people from being able to grow crops and sustain themselves.
Furthermore, our sisters, brothers, and siblings in Puerto Rico and
other Caribbean islands don’t have clean water, and that reality is
life threatening.  

God
created enough, but that doesn’t mean people have access to enough.
Simply claiming that God will take care of the vulnerable and thirsty
doesn’t do them any good if the mechanisms of human society prevent
them from having access to life giving water.  

And
yet God created enough, and works with us and through us to
connect resources to people in need.  In this church we seek to
connect food, water, coffee, soap, toilet paper, diapers, hygiene
products, home furnishings, flood buckets, hygiene kits, beauty,
music, and knowledge to those who need them!  (To name a few.)  We
are part of the work of redistributing so that God’s abundance can be
known.  We are seeking to live out the instructions in Philippians 2.

Did
any of the computer geeks notice that the Philippians text is
basically written in if/then code?  Just me?  That’s OK.  IF there is
any encouragement in Christ (implication here seems to be that anyone
hearing this would say “YES!  Of course there is), IF there is any
consolation in love (almost everyone would agree with this), IF there
is any sharing in the Spirit, IF you have experienced any compassion
and sympathy (so most people by this time are yearning to say yes),
THEN “make my joy complete.”  OK, how?  

With
connection.  Use your lives to take care of each other.  Let go of
ambition that is only about you and work towards helping others.  Be
together in love.  Actually, it says a lot more, but I think the
church and the world both abuse the idea of “unity” as a means of
controlling the vulnerable: that is they claim that those who call
for justice for all are disturbing the peace and should be silenced
in the name of unity.  This makes me squirm and I want to to skip
over the “same mind, same love” part.  However, I think more
nuance is called for!  (#whenindoubtmorenuance)

In
an article I read this week on NPR, they
talked about the form of Russian influence on US public opinion
saying, “Moscow’s
intelligence agencies not only used secret cyberattacks to steal and
leak information, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded. The
Russians also openly bought ads on Facebook aimed at amplifying the
most controversial issues in American political life — including
abortion, guns and LGBT issues — and used fake accounts to spread
disinformation and even organize real-life
rallies.”1

While
I have many strong opinions, most certainly including on the issues
that Russia is trying to use our society, I’m really struck by this
story.  Another country thinks that the best way to destabilize our
society and gain influence is by keeping us fighting with each other.
It is likely a great strategy, it leads to deep divisions, and could
even lead to the destruction of our country.  When issues divide us,
we can end up not seeing or hearing each other as people at all!  So,
while I don’t much like the instruction to be of the “same mind”
(ok, fine, I still hate it), I think perhaps it needs to be taken
very seriously.  We must work to humanize each other, even across
differences.

To
return to the stories, God created and created with abundance.  When
we trust in each other and are trustworthy for each other, there is
enough.  On this World Communion Sunday, where we are reminded that
God’s table extends around our globe, may we savor the abundance of
creation and seek to be people of trust in that “enough-ness.”
Amen

1 Philip
Ewing “As
Scrutiny Of Social Networks Grows, Influence Attacks Continue In
Real Time” published September
28, 2017 at 5:01AM ET
http://www.npr.org/2017/09/28/554024047/as-scrutiny-of-social-networks-grows-influence-attacks-continue-in-real-time

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 1, 2017

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