“Words to a Warring Church’

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019
by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:16-30

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”1 Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

Earlier in the letter, Paul worked with a common Corinthian saying, “All things are lawful”. He reflects, “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (10:23-24) Over and over again, Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to take care of each other, and use their power for the communal well-being.

Luke 4 contains another example of a faith community misbehaving. In this case it is said to be the synagogue in Nazareth, although historically speaking there are some reasons to be doubtful of the factuality of this story. Some of them are: we aren’t sure there was a synagogue in Nazareth; if there was, we don’t know that they would have been prosperous enough to have a scroll of Isaiah; and perhaps just as importantly, Nazareth isn’t built on a cliff.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke, based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Believable or not for those who heard it, the Isaiah passage emphasizes God being on the side of the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed, and working towards their good, and Luke believes this work is embodied in Jesus.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

Having done adequate work understanding the texts on their own merit, I believe we are now free to excavate them for meaning for us today. I believe most of you have heard that The United Methodist Church is a bit, shall we say, Corinthian? For the uninitiated into the infighting in The United Methodist Church, let me offer a few disclaimers: 1. The fights in the church at large are NOT reflected in this congregation. After two years of careful study and conversation, in 1996, this congregation voted to be affirming and celebration of God’s LGBTQIA+ children, and we hold FIRM in that position today. 2. The General Church has pretty much always been a big fight for power, money, and influence. This is a discouraging fact (I’d love it if the General Church were a spiritually centered experience in collaboration and sharing agape around the world). However, it is a fact. In part this is true because we have a democratic process – we neither have a leader at the top telling us what to do NOR have complete freedom for our own churches. Furthermore, we are super diverse, and that means we often have very different values, and ideas of where power, money, and influence should be used. It isn’t ALL bad.

Now that I’ve offered the disclaimers, this month the Global United Methodist Church is getting together in Saint Louis to have a big old fight. (February 23-26). Officially, the church will be discussing, “human sexuality.” Really, the church will be fighting over whether or not people who are LGBTQIA+ are beloved by God. (Yes.) More deeply, I believe the church is still fighting over who has control of money, power, and influence, and the fight has been put on the backs of LGBTQIA+ people when really it is about whether or not the old-school power brokers (most commonly older, whiter, richer, Southern US, conservative, men) can make other people do their bidding anymore. (Thanks be to God, no.)

In First Corinthians, Paul is VERY concerned about the WAYS the church treated each other in their disagreements. He seems more concerned about this than about the answers that they come to. They were told to build each other up. This is a super duper hard thing to remember coming into General Conference. I believe we are all called to see each other’s humanity, and to see each other as beloved by God, even our disagreement. I do NOT believe it is acceptable to see another member of the church as the ENEMY. I believe that the way we disagree is important, and Paul’s teaching is very important.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

However, I’m going to play fair right now. I’m going to start by telling you what our side (the side for inclusion of all of God’s people) does that infuriates the other side (the side that likely thinks of itself as for “purity”). First of all, we disobey. The conservatives have had the majority power in the church since 1972, and have used it to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained or appointed and UM clergy can’t preside at same sex weddings. Because we don’t believe that these rules have authority in the eyes of God, we’ve disobeyed them.

Furthermore, we’ve protested them. We’ve gone to General Conferences, and other meetings, and protested, and people have been uncomfortable with that. In 2000, we (I wasn’t there, this is the “we” of the inclusivity movement) even shut down General Conference. Our Bishop at the time – yours and mine – chose to be arrested with the protesters in solidarity, which was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Our refusal to obey oppressive authority, and our refusal to be quiet about it has been a problem for the other side, and is taken as unfair tactics. Now, clearly, I disagree, but I thought it would be nice to share their viewpoint first for once.

On our side, the complaints are a bit different. First of all, our primary issue, is with the church claiming that some of God’s beloveds aren’t God’s beloveds. That said, James Baldwin once said (and Jan Huston was nice enough to post on my FB this week to remind me) “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Thus, I do not believe that both sides are equally valid when it comes to discussing the humanity and right to exist of LGBTQIA+ people in the church.

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals2, minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals3, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church4

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

However, I’m willing to settle for a bit less. I’d like to be blessed with the ability to keep on loving, and keep on seeing God’s light in those with whom I disagree NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY BEHAVE. I keep on praying, and practicing love, in hopes that I will be able to do so.

This feels like a lesson far larger than General Conference or The United Methodist Church. But it also takes a second step. I want to know people are beloved by God, no matter how badly they behave, but I do NOT think that means I have to let them walk all over me, nor over God’s other beloveds. Walter Wink teaches that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” he means “use subversive methods to require your opponent to respect you.”

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2 See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

Image is of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition logo.

“Words to a Warring Church’ based on 1 Corinthians…

February 3, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”¹ Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke (who was not from Galilee), based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals², minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals³, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church⁴.

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4 https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 3, 2019

“One and Many, Many and One”

January 28, 2019
by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and John 2:1-11

If you talk to people about their faith, there are a lot of stories about personal experiences of the Divine that come up in the answers. The stories themselves vary widely – God seems to be infinitely creative – but the power of experiences themselves and the impact they have on people afterward are more consistent. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said that the way you can tell if someone has had a authentic experience of the Divine is if they are more loving afterward – to God, to others, and to themselves. I haven’t heard a better way to tell. Those experiences can really matter.

Given how many people have had personal experiences of the Divine, it is a little bit surprising how few of the Biblical accounts of God’s miracles are said to impact only one or a few people. The healing stories could count in this way, but the healing of any individual inherently heals their community as well. Similarly, you might think that the stories of women’s wombs being opened by God are individual, but as they usually occur when the baby is either one of the new patriarchs or one of the new prophets, it isn’t really. Most of the miracles are communal. I’m told that within the Hebrew Bible, the major exception to this happens in the Elijah/Elisha cycle, where some miracles are more individual, and as such, this wedding in Cana story fits most with those stories.

Sure, all the wedding guests benefited from being able to drink good wine, but the recipient of the miracle was the host, who avoided shame because of it. Shame, and its inverse honor, were the MOST important facet of life in the Ancient Near East, and they were assumed to be a zero sum game. One could not gain honor without someone else losing it. They were also assumed to be a family matter, if any family member lost honor, so did the rest.

It is worth considering that Jesus and Mary may have been related to the host of the wedding. It is, after all, one of the common reasons that a person gets invited to a wedding, and since Cana was likely about 9 miles away from Nazareth, this was less likely to be an immediate neighbor. Furthermore, if the host of the wedding was family, then the lack of wine DID have something to do with Mary and Jesus, because it had to do with their honor and shame as much well as the host’s.

Also, it seems that it was common in those days for wedding guests to bring wine to the wedding. The story tells us that Jesus showed up at the wedding with disciples in tow, so this was likely a rather large entourage. It was also a poor one, so they probably didn’t bring enough wine to counterbalance their presence, so it may have sort of been Jesus’ fault that there wasn’t enough wine.

In any case, the story says that Jesus produced WAAAAAAY too much wine- about 454 bottles of it, by today’s measure. This probably relates to the gospel writer’s tendency towards exaggeration, so we don’t have to fuss over it much. There is probably also intended significance in the fact that the wine was made into the jars used for ritual purification. By the time the Gospel of John was written, the early Christian community was seeking to distance itself from their Jewish roots, including by foregoing purification rituals. So, basically, this story was a diss on the Jewish ritual of purification – and we should notice whenever our texts have an anti-Jewish bias. (Because we should.)

Now, you may think I’m babbling on about this story in too much detail and for too long (and you may be right), but this is a curious little story. This is the ONLY miracle in the Gospel of John that is unique – it has no parallel nor corollary in the other gospels. John says that the “signs” of Jesus reveal his “glory” – which is actually another way of saying his honor (and thus the same as saying his lack of shame). Because of showing his glory/honor, it said that Jesus’ disciples believed in him. I’m not sure that this is exactly how most of us today think about miracles, but it is interesting to think about how the Gospel writer thought of them! The gospel writer tells this story to say that Jesus was honorable, and so that we know why people believed in him, and presumably so we will too. That’s, as far as we’re told, the point. The Gospel wants to help people follow Jesus, and to do so means convincing them that Jesus is an honorable man worthy of being followed.

Thus, I think I know what I’m supposed to get out of this story: motivation to follow Jesus. I’m not entirely sure that is what I get out of this story though. The most interesting part for me is the reminder that Jesus was likely POOR. He and his disciples may have accidentally shown up at a party without an appropriate gift and nearly shamed their host.

While my study of the Bible has brought me to this conclusion many times (that Jesus was likely poor), it remains an insight to me. It wasn’t something I was aware of growing up, and I don’t think it is a shared assumption when we come to the text. In the US today, where we live in a meritocracy of sorts, our cultural assumptions tend towards thinking rich people are better and more worthy than poor people. This was likely even more true in prior eras of Western Civilization when it was further assumed that rich people were chosen by God to be rich because God liked them better. (I’m not entirely convinced that this idea has been eradicated from our collective consciousness.) It can be a little bit shocking to consider Jesus, who most of us think of as the most important human to ever live, as … poor.

It certainly messes with a lot of our assumptions.

When I was in seminary and being trained in various schools of theological thinking, I was really shocked to learn that Liberation Theology claims that God has a “preferential option for the poor.” The concept, however, is well established in the Bible. Much later on, when I read Debt, A History of the First 5000 Years, I was better prepared to learn that the author, David Graeber, believes that the world’s major religions emerged as counter movements to the world’s developing market economies and their inherent devaluing of human life..¹ As a person of faith, I’d take this a step further and suggest that as systems developed to devalue human life, God worked in the world to counter that and value God’s beloved humans, and God’s counter work became the world’s faith traditions.

When we think about Jesus as poor, and God working for the benefit of the poor and vulnerable, we can see more clearly what God is up to today. Jesus, like many others in his day, and many others in our day, lacked food security. He often did not know where his next meal would come from or if it would be enough, like the 1 out of every 8 Americans who is food insecure..² God worked through Jesus, who was poor. God worked through Jesus, who was poor, to take care of others who are poor. I believe God is still up to the same work – taking care of those who are poor, and vulnerable, and most often being very successful doing this work through others who are poor and vulnerable.

If this feels uncomfortable because you don’t identify as poor, I’ll remind you that according to the theory in Bridges out of Poverty, there are many facets to poverty including financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, in support systems, in role models, and in knowledge of hidden rules. When we look at it this way, we are all impoverished in some ways, and those areas of our life may be exactly where God is at work. The other option, however, in discomfort is to just sit with it – often God is up to something in our discomfort as well.

In any case,, there is inherent value in remembering that Jesus was poor, and that people who are poor are like Jesus in being poor. This is an inversion of the ways of the world, one we desperately need so that we can acknowledge the full humanity, and sacred worth of people who are poor.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, . “I have the audacity to believe,” he exclaimed, “that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”.³

“Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all [hu]mankind with the basic necessities of life? Even deserts can be irrigated and top soil can be replaced. We cannot complain of a lack of land, for there are twenty-five million square miles of tillable land, of which we are using less than seven million. We have amazing knowledge of vitamins, nutrition, the chemistry of food, and the versatility of atoms. There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst.”.⁴

He makes an excellent point, one that is equally real now. Our responsibility as people of faith is to counter the narratives that only some people matter, and advocate for those who are poor and/or vulnerable. We are to dream with God, and with MLK, of a world that uses its resources to take care of ALL of God’s children (which means all people).

1 Corinthians talks about the gifts of the spirit – that we don’t all get the same gifts, but that together we have all the gifts we need to do God’s work. I have learned that this is one of my core believes. I LOVE that God gives us such different gifts and abilities – that we don’t all want the same jobs, responsibilities, or committees. And I love that because of our diversity of gifts we’re able to be a healthy whole. It always strikes me as amazing when we get to the end of a nominations season to see how many people we have willing to share their gifts with the rest of us, and that together we have more than enough.

I believe this is how the world works. We have enough food, we have enough wisdom to know how to distribute it, we even have enough people to have a will get everyone fed. We just have to get past some barriers to make it happen. It is possible, and as it is God’s will, we can be a part of making it happen. Some of that work is already being done, and the work that remains – will get done. We are each only one, but we are many. God works with individuals and communities. Feeding the people is part of the building the kindom, God is a kindom builder and so are we. And, as the gospel writer of John says, when God is at work, there is MORE than enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 I cannot recommend this book enough.

2 https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx

3 https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/food-insecurity-social-justive

4 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-b-escarra/martin-luther-king-hunger-in-america_b_809275.html”>https://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-b-escarra/martin-luther-king-hunger-in-america_b_809275.html . MLK, The Quest for Peace and Justice, Nobel Lecture

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

January 27, 2019

“Opening Our Hearts to Gratitude”

January 23, 2019
by Sara Baron

Based on 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Our theme this Advent is “openness.” We are exploring it in worship, and it is the theme of our Advent Devotions – now available in the Narthex!! Today we’re starting with “Opening Our Hearts to Gratitude.” This may feel redundant to start with gratitude right after November and Thanksgiving, but I think there may always be more to say about gratitude. Or, at the very least, there is always more to be grateful for.

While I adore the season of Advent, I often struggle with the Advent texts the lectionary provides. The texts as a whole are cold, dark, scary, and apocalyptic. In them, one can hear Christian thinking about the SECOND coming of Christ because in the texts, one is reminded that officially Advent is at once a season of waiting for the coming Christ Child at Christmas and a season of waiting for the second coming of Christ.

The issue for me is that I have yet to be convinced about this whole “second coming” thing. It doesn’t fit how I understand Jesus, his message, his work, or the continued work of God with the Body of Christ. I’m perfectly fine with any or all of you being deeply committed to the second coming, because as always, I could be wrong!

Yet, my understanding of the second coming is this: the early Christians claimed Jesus as the Messiah. The faithful Jews who did not become Jesus followers responded by pointing out that Jesus did not do the things that they’d expected a Messiah to do, in particular to establish a kingdom on earth with political, military, and economic might. The Christians had trouble refuting this argument (because it was true), but they worked on it together and decided that Jesus was going to come back and do those things. This idea has taken a stronghold in the Christian tradition.

It doesn’t fit with the way Jesus lived, which had NOTHING to do with wanting to establish a powerful kingship. Nor does it have to do with how Jesus acted, which was all about empowering people without power to work together for the common good. It also misses the resurrection narrative itself, in which the followers of Christ are enabled and empowered to continue his work to transform the world.

I don’t think Jesus is coming back, at least not as a single, human, physical figure to establish a kingdom on earth. RATHER, I believe the shared work of the Body of Christ is to be the continuation of the work of Jesus to build the kindom of God. I believe that we are the continual way that Jesus is “back” although I more commonly think of it as the way that Christ continues to live.

So, I tend to get frustrated with the Advent texts. However, I still think my take could be wrong, and I don’t think I have more wisdom or knowledge than thousand of years of shared tradition, so I try every year to find my peace with the Advent texts. This year I’ve made my peace by picking two Pauline epistle texts (this week AND next week) and attending to them. These are lectionary texts, but not the apocalyptic ones. It is a balance. I think it is going to work out, they’re really excellent.

I wish we started Advent with Creation – as a way of remembering the start of our faith story with the start of the new year. So, I want to try it. My favorite “story” of creation in the Bible is Psalm 104. Read it here: Psalm 104, NRSV.

As it turns out, creation is a great starting point for gratitude. For many of us, being in the wonder of Creation is the easiest way for us to connect with the Divine, and I think that is in part because we are so overwhelmed with gratitude for the wonder and mystery of it all. The Psalm meditations on how each creature is cared for within creation, by God’s good gifts. The gifts for humans are like a communion set PLUS –“wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” The Psalmist is not only practiced at noticing the wonders of creation, the Psalmist is also masterful at naming them with gratitude.

Another of the major access points to gratitude meets us in the opening verse of our reading from 1 Thessalonians. Paul asks, “How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account?” I have been meditating on this verse all week, thinking of individual people I know and love; considering how incredibly grateful I am for their lives, their wisdom, their actions, their prayers, their BEING; and then trying to consider what it would take to adequately put together words to express my wonder.

How can we thank God enough for you? It actually feels impossible – even if I just pick one person, and even the one I pick isn’t someone I see all the time or know exceptionally well. How could I adequately thank God for the support of my high school chemistry teacher, or my junior high Sunday School teachers, for a college friend I’ve lost touch with but once had thought provoking conversations with? I’m SO grateful. But the words don’t feel like enough. And then there are ones I know better, and the ones I see more: how I could I ever thank God enough for my beloved partner, for my parents, for my dear friends, for the leaders, and members and participants of this church, for the staff I work with who make so many things possible?

The possibilities of things to be grateful for is (or approaches) infinite. I see where Paul gets his exuberance. There is so much joy to be found on account of God’s beloved people. There is so much to be grateful for. If you are needing the gift of opennness in your life, if you are willing to play with letting gratitude soak into your heart, I encourage meditating on this exuberant verse. “How can we thank God enough or you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account?” There is plenty to be found in that one little verse.

Paul’s exuberant gratitude for the people was writing to is, of course, not the final point. He also offers blessings to them, and one of them is particularly striking, “May Christ increase to overflowing your love for one another and for all people, even as our love does for you.” Scholars believe that this is the first letter of Paul, making this the first book written in the New Testament. Thus it reflects the earliest recording we have of the faith of the early Christians. I was stuck by this passage because it is more outward looking that much of the New Testament is. I suspect that as Christianity developed, and did so in a world that was hostile to it, it became more concerns with internal survival. Here though, early on, there is a balance between the relationships of the people of faith and those beyond the faith.

Love is presented as expansive. God’s love flows to all people, God’s love flows to and through Paul, God’s love flows to and through the early church in Thessalonia – as does Paul’s love, and Paul prays that it will increase to overflowing with them – allowing the love to be shared within the church and beyond to ALL people.

The joy isn’t the final point – love spreading to all people is the final point. But that end point goes through abundant gratitude. Love itself is a reason to be grateful. So is the expansiveness of love, the healing nature of love, the fact that God’s nature is one of love, the reality that we can share love, the reality for any of us that we have ever felt love, that it comes in so many forms.

How can we ever thank God enough?

Now, having focused on the wonders of creation and the incredible power of love, I want to take a step back. Gratitude is very important, it feeds our hearts, changes our perspectives, and allows a deepening of our spiritual lives.

That said, not everything is wonderful, or even good. There is deep pain the world including grief in its many forms, depression and anxiety, illness and injury, abuse and neglect. There are things we are not grateful for, and there are time when we are not filled with gratitude.

What then?

I think honesty and integrity are in order. When we are not grateful, it is worth paying attention to what emotions we are feeling. Whether it be anger, sadness, despair, frustration, exhaustion, confusion, or something else entirely, our emotions deserve some space to BE in the world without judgment. They’re even worth exploring. WHY are we angry, or sad? What ELSE do we feel? How strong are those feelings? Have they had a chance they need to be expressed?

THEN, and only then, it is worth considering IF there is space for gratitude too. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t, there is no right answer. If so, there may be a silver lining that can be a source of gratitude. Perhaps you can’t be grateful for a terrible experience you had – but you can be grateful that it is over. Perhaps you are homeless and can’t be grateful for homelessness – but you can be grateful for those who see your humanity and support you. Perhaps you can’t be grateful for the death of a loved one – but you can be grateful for the time you had with them.

You don’t have to force gratitude on yourself if this isn’t the right time for you. It will come again when it is ready.

However, if you in a place and time in your life when it is possible to feel gratitude, I encourage you to take the time to notice the multitude of possibilities for gratitude around you – from creation to people and beyond – and to express it as well as you can. I suspect it will open your heart – to God, to others, and to even more gratitude as well. Amen

Preached by Rev. Sara E. Baron on December 2, 2018

“Opening Our Souls to Joy”

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019
by Sara Baron

Based on Philippians 1:3-11

Paul says that every one of his prayers is filled with gratitude to God for the joy he has in the people in the church in Philippi. This feels like a very big claim, I’ve always been tempted to use logic against it – I really think he prayed prayers that didn’t include the church in Philippi. However, as I can also be prone to exaggeration, I have to let it go. Most scholars believe that Paul was particularly fond of the church in Philippi, that it was his favorite. That may be so, and help make sense of it all. In any case, he is expressing a large amount of joy.

Last week we talked about some similar words to the church in Thessalonia, and we focused on the life-giving nature of the gratitude. This week we’re playing with the joy. Paul’s joy in the people in the church in Philippi provides us a space to consider joy in our own lives.

I recently watched a TED talk about joy, “Where Joy Hides and Where to Find It.” The speaker, Ingrid Fetell Lee, talks about asking people about what brought them joy. She says,

“I noticed that there were certain things that started to come up again and again and again. They were things like cherry blossoms and bubbles … swimming pools and tree houses … hot air balloons and googly eyes —and ice cream cones, especially the ones with the sprinkles. These things seemed to cut across lines of age and gender and ethnicity. I mean, if you think about it, we all stop and turn our heads to the sky when the multicolored arc of a rainbow streaks across it. And fireworks — we don’t even need to know what they’re for, and we feel like we’re celebrating, too. These things aren’t joyful for just a few people; they’re joyful for nearly everyone. They’re universally joyful. And seeing them all together, it gave me this indescribably hopeful feeling. The sharply divided, politically polarized world we live in sometimes has the effect of making our differences feel so vast as to be insurmountable. And yet underneath it all, there’s a part of each of us that finds joy in the same things. And though we’re often told that these are just passing pleasures, in fact, they’re really important, because they remind us of the shared humanity we find in our common experience of the physical world.”¹

She goes on to say that she struggled to identify the patterns in those things for a long time, and then she noticed that things that bring joy are: “round things … pops of bright color … symmetrical shapes … a sense of abundance and multiplicity … a feeling of lightness or elevation.² Ingrid Fetell Lee works in design and aesthetics, and that helps her see things others might have missed. Her next question is about why the world of humans is so dull, rectangular, and drab if that is the opposite of what brings us joy. She posits, “We all start out joyful, but as we get older, being colorful or exuberant opens us up to judgment. Adults who exhibit genuine joy are often dismissed as childish or too feminine or unserious or self-indulgent, and so we hold ourselves back from joy, and we end up in a world that looks like this.”³

Is that it? Is it so simple as we don’t want to be seen as childish or feminine or unserious? If so, that’s really sad. Jesus once said, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17, also found in Matthew and Mark.) Now, I’m not claiming to know what he meant by that, but I’m going to suggest that it is POSSIBLE he meant we should allow ourselves space for joy. To be a follower of Jesus doesn’t have to be boring, drab, colorless, nor rectangular experience. It can be fun, and full of laughter and joy. In fact, I think joy is a sign of spiritual maturity!

That said, I’ve struggled with it too. Especially in the years that I was seen as a “young woman pastor” more easily than as a “pastor” I pushed to be taken seriously in entirely too many ways! A few years ago, when I attended the Courage to Lead program, we were asked to bring an object with special meaning to us to symbolize our intention for the retreats. Rather to my own shock, I picked a stick that I’ve been carrying around the world for 20+ years.

I’d first encountered that stick when I was a junior high camper at Sky Lake, participating in a camp where we slept in tents, cooked our meals over fires, and generally savored being in the woods. Someone had identified a small black birch tree, and pointed it out. A conversation ensued about birch beer, which is a soda of my childhood in Pennsylvania that I’ve realized not everyone has has experienced.⁴ Think rootbeer, but … better. We wondered if the tree would taste like birch beer, so we… tried it. We tried sucking on this little tree, and it turned out it DID taste like birch beer! I’ve recently looked it up, and it turns out birch beer is flavored from the bark of black birch trees, so this is fairly reasonable.

Anyway, my young self thought it was AWESOME that a tree tasted like birch beer. So I broke off a stick and sucked on it, and then I kept the stick as a reminder of that awesomeness. It lived in a drawer in my parent’s house until I moved into my first parsonage, and then it has moved with me since. I can still look at this ridiculous stick and remember the JOY of that day. When I was asked to bring an object to a retreat in Wisconsin I looked around the house for something light and easy to pack. I brought the stick. Then I remembered I had to connect it to an intention, and that meant I had to figure out how on earth to connect a 20+ year old birch stick to my intentionality around my leadership capacity as a pastor.

As I shared about the stick at that retreat, I found myself saying that I’m naturally a person who experiences wonder and delight in the world. Yet, I was aware I’d leaned into critical thinking and cynicism in order to soothe hurts related to realizing how broken the world, its institutions, and its people are. I hoped in the course of the Courage to Lead program I might find my way back to being a person who finds it easy to see wonder and delight in the world.

That retreat was in 2015. The intention I brought to it has seemed to … work. I see differently than I once did, and there is more wonder in what I see than ever. In the November newsletter I talked about stages of faith development: pre-critical naivete, critical thinking, and post-critical naivete. It still takes a little bit of effort for me to be in post-critical naivete, but it is easier than it used to be. I know how broken things are, and now, even knowing that, I can see how wonderful and miraculous it is when things are a little less broken, or healing happens, or delight breaks in. It has become a little bit easier for me to see complexity and wonder at the same time.

And all of that lets the joy in better – EVEN these days!

I am also wondering what else holds us back from joy? One proposal, that I think holds water, is that we get held back from joy by trying to be taken seriously. Of course, sometimes we don’t feel joy because we are too busy feeling other things, and that’s healthy and appropriate. Yet, if we are looking for joy, how can we find it? I wonder if sometimes our lives end up being too stuffed full to make space for joy – because joy likes spontaneity and a little bit of time to savor. (It is not overly methodical!!!) Apparently color, roundness, lightness, and symmetry can help – as can ice cream and balloons. I suspect that more than anything we may need to just open ourselves up to it – allow little things that bring us joy to matter and savor their goodness.

Paul talks about a very deep joy, and I think his joy intersects with his faith. He goes on to say, “ I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” (v. 6) That’s a pretty joy-filled statement too. That confidence is outstanding. What if it is true? What if the things that matter most WILL be brought to completion? Its a wondrous idea. Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope.”⁵ If the work that God has begun in us is the work of many generations, then it is only by faith and hope that we can trust it will get done.

And there are many things that I think God is up to that are going to take generations: racial equity, gender equity, full inclusion and celebration of LGBTQIA people, eliminating world hunger, creating world peace, adequate housing for all, excellent health care for all, curing cancer, making space for people with disabilities to be seen as equally vital to our shared humanity, universal access to education, helping us adapt to climate change, guiding us to minimize climate change, curing HIV/AIDS, creating a world where all people know and live compassion and empathy, making space for beauty in many forms to fill up human souls, long term sustainability, and access for all to sources of deep joy – to name a few. I hope and pray that Paul is right and the work that God has begun, God will bring to completion.

In the meantime, we can notice the instances – large or small – where progress is being made. I believe that in noticing such things, and celebrating them, creates more of them! I think part of our work as co-creators with God is to attend to the goodness (as well as to try to create it.) I think noticing joyful things and savoring them matters. I think joy is one of the many gifts God gifts us, and paying attention to it gives us clues as to who God is and what God is up to in the world. Paul goes on, in our passage today to say, “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight.” I’d add joy. This is MY prayer: that your joy and love may overflow more and more – and that they’ll guide you into fuller knowledge and insight. May God help make it so. Amen

1Ingrid Fetell Lee “”Where joy hids and how to find it” a TED Talk from April 2018, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/ingrid_fetell_lee_where_joy_hides_and_how_to_find_it/transcript Accessed on 11/29/18

2Lee

3Lee

4If you want to know more about birch beer, I thought this was interesting: https://modernfarmer.com/2014/12/birch-beer-best-soda-youve-never-tried/ I, however, grew up with the clear kind.

5Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Sciber’s Son’s, 1962), 63. (but found in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 page 43.)

Preached by Rev. Sara E. Baron on December 9, 2018

“Opening Our Lives to God at Play”

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019
by Sara Baron

Based on Luke 1:39-55

When I attempt to put myself into Mary’s shoes, I find them quite scary. Mary was a young Jewish woman in Galilee in the last years of the rule of Herod the Great. Can we think about what that meant for a moment?

You’ve likely heard of the Jewish exile, which started with the Babylonian defeat and capture of Jerusalem in 587/586 BCE. The exile refers to the subsequent removal of the political, religious, and intellectual leadership to captivity in Babylon. After the Bablyonian empire was defeated by the Persian empire in 539, the Jewish captives were permitted to return, thus ending the exile. That is known as the “return” or “restoration.” It was a time of rebuilding and creation – the walls and gates of Jerusalem were restored, the 2^nd Temple was built, and Jewish identity solidified.

However, from before time of the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem through the life of Jesus, the Jews and their nation of Judah remained a vassal state to some empire or another. The only exception to this is 167 to 160 BCE during the Maccabean revolt from which comes the history of Hanukkah. By the time of Mary, then, the Jews had been living under the dominance of Empires for nearly 600 years straight.

Furthermore, Mary was from GALILEE…. Galilee had been part of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel, which had been captured and defeated in 722 BCE by the Assyrian Empire. During the time of the Maccabees, Jews from Judea resettled the land and claimed it for traditional Jewish living again – at least in the small villages. So, even within Judaism of the 1^st century before the common era, Galilee was second class, almost a colony within an Empire.

Then there was the Galilee’s Galilee-ness. Galilee, which had been part of the Northern Empire, was known for being distrustful of centralized power. (It should shock no one that Jesus was formed there.) When Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, revolts broke out, starting in Sepphoras – the largest city in Galilee.

Marcus Borg describes it like this:

When Herod died in 4BCE, revolts broke out in all parts of the Jewish homeland, indicating how repressive and unpopular his reign had been. Rome responded by sending legions of troops from Syria. In Galilee, the legions reconquered its largest city, Sepphoris, and sold many of the survivors into slavery. Nazareth was nearby, only 4 miles away. Then the Roman legion continued south, reconquering Jerusalem, and crucified two thousand of its defenders as a public demonstration of the consequences of the rebellion. Jesus was an infant or toddler during this time.¹

This wasn’t EXCEPTIONAL, this was life under foreign occupation and the attempts to reconstitute self-rule.

These are the facts of any Galilean’s life. Mary had some additional factors. First of all, she was a young woman, likely pubescent. Sexual harassment and sexual assault are NOT inventions of the 21^st century, and I imagine it was terrifying to be a young woman then as it often is now. Also, puberty is a very hard time for anyone, and I imagine that hasn’t changed. Bodies change, hormones rage, and life is confusing. Let’s add one more piece to the first two: Mary was pregnant. Talk about hormones, bodies changing, and confusion!! Furthermore, in those days it wasn’t uncommon for women to die in childbirth, and being a parent is scary!

So far we have dealt with fact and likely conjecture. I don’t have historical evidence to prove that Mary was young, but it is very likely. There are two more pieces of the story that are unclear – they aren’t likely nor unlikely. The story says that Mary is engaged – that may or may not be so. If she was engaged, that might have been scary since her fiance was likely much older than she was and not someone she picked. Furthermore, if he was not the father of her child, she lived in fear of being found out and ruined. Similarly, if Mary was pregnant and engaged (but not married) then her fiance was not the father – as the marriage WAS the consummation. Then it seems possible that she was pregnant by assault and … sexual assault is terrifying.

Basically, Mary’s experience sounds to me to be similar to how it might feel to be 12 years old, pregnant, and in a Central American caravan trying to seek asylum in the US. The whole thing sounds terrifying.

I wouldn’t expect either young woman to to praising God with words of strength and profound adoration. I would expect either one to be begging God for help with survival. But that isn’t what our passage does today – not at all. Instead, our passage has Mary exclaiming the wonder of God, in ways that DEFY historical context, Jewish history, and even the moment she’s living in her life. Of course, the word were likely penned later by Christians a few generations afterwards, based on the song by Hannah, but that actually doesn’t make them less interesting, it makes them MORE impressive. That means at the time the words were written, the Christians were experiencing serious persecution, and still they wrote, “for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is [God’s] name.” There is something about God that is bigger than individual survival or even communal well being!

The words attributed to Mary in this passage are words of deep and abiding faith. They may not have been her words, but they are an expression of the faith of Jewish women for generations. They sound like what it would take to be the woman who could raise a man like Jesus. They express faith in a God who is trustworthy – and despite MANY reasons to be afraid, they express trust and hope that all matter of all things will be well.

They trust that God is at work, but more than that, that God is at PLAY bringing the world towards justice and wholeness. Now, we’ve reached my major point. I’d think Mary would be afraid, but instead she is delighted and filled with praise. She sees a God of play. One who loves justices and brings it into the world with joy and creativity. So, it is time for a transition – to hear what she said and what it means, but this time I’m going to use someone else’s words and rhythm, and rhyme. Will the children please join me up front?

These words come from Rev. Emmy Kegler, the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Northeast Minneapolis, in her sermon “The Heart of Justice — or, How the Grinch Learned the Magnificat” from 2015.

There are hundreds of carols we sing every year,
celebrating the season when Christmas draws near.
These hymns are familiar and loved very dear,
And we sing loud and proud about midnights so clear.

But some songs get forgotten in the midst of the season,
Songs that have been with us long for a reason.
Songs someone carefully thought up and wrote out,
Songs that are all what the season’s about.

Today’s story is that — the song of sweet Mary,
Who faced some good news exciting and scary.
She was carrying Jesus, God’s very own Son,
And sang today’s story in a-dor-a-tion:

My soul is enraptured, uplifted, fulfilled,
For God has seen me and a purpose has willed.
Though I am quite humble, unimportant and small,
God has chosen me to bear the Savior of all.

But I should not be shocked that God chose a girl —
God’s made unusual choices since the start of the world.
You’d think God would choose big names, the mighty, the strong,
God should rain down power to fight and right wrongs.

But in all the stories I’ve ever been told,
God works in the outsider, the young or the old,
Those who we think are empty-handed and poor
Are the very ones God comes to and loves more and more.

God isn’t impressed by riches or appearance,
God looks at the heart and sees what is nearest.
If your thoughts are un-good or unkind or untrue
God will not let you hurt whoever you choose.

God isn’t excited about rulers and kings,
God knows earthly might is a dangerous thing.
God remembers the promises and seeks out the lost,
God is righting the world, no matter the cost.

All the Whos down in Whoville loved the Magnificat,
but the Grinch, still learning his lesson, did NOT.
“I’m confused,” the Grinch said, “At first it seems sweet
That God looks at the lowly and thinks that they’re neat.

“But Mary says God takes the strength from the strong,
And sends rich away empty, and — well, that seems wrong.
I thought God loved us all, exactly the same.
Choosing some over others sounds like a shame.”

“This isn’t a song we should sing in this season,
This song is confusing and feels without reason.
Life isn’t fair, and I do wish it would be
But now’s not the time to talk about should-be.

“We’ve got to get ready for family and feast!
For singing, and joy, and cooking roast beast!”
Cindy Lou Who, the little Who whom you may remember
Listened kindly to the Grinch’s grumps through December.

“I think,” Cindy said, after thinking a lot,
“There must be a reason for the Magnificat.
Christmas began with the birth of a child,
And while it sounds cute, the scene was quite wild!

“Rich men called magi, who studied the stars,
Packed up their camels and brought gifts from afar.
Expecting a new king to be born very soon,
They checked at the palace, as one ought to do.

“But he was born in a stable, filled with smelly old sheep!
His parents were homeless, had nowhere to sleep.
His dad was a carpenter — not very wealthy,
And I can’t imagine sleeping in hay is healthy.”

“But still,” the Grinch said, “I thought God was fair.
I thought God viewed each of us with just the same care.
If that’s so, why does God feed some and not others?
Shouldn’t we split it between all sisters and brothers?”

“I think,” Cindy said, after thinking a bit,
“That God’s idea isn’t unfair or unfit.
The rich Whos have money. They’re already eating.
But for those on the edges, there is no more seating.

“If God is ensuring the poor get some too,
God isn’t unfair — God’s thinking it through.
God’s evening out what is unfairly done,
Feeding the hungry and forgetting none.”

“This is called justice,” Cindy Lou Who reminded,
“Making things equal and right for all Whomankind.
Some Whos already have more than they need.
God’s concern is for those who are trampled by greed.

“Justice means when something goes wrong, God will right it.
And to that hard work of change we’re invited.
To fixing what’s broken. To righting old wrongs.
I think that is why we sing Mary’s great song.”

“But still,” the Grinch said, “it doesn’t seem fair
To take from one person to even the share.
If I earned it, I keep it. I can give it away
If I want to, but God taking it isn’t okay.

How can I buy gifts if God looks down on money?
Can we cook roast beast if God sends us off hungry?
Once I stole food, but brought it back to you.
Now when I make food, I buy it all new.

If I’m not the one causing any unfairness,
Why am I being charged with justice awareness?”
“I think,” Cindy said, after thinking quite quietly
“God worries how the mighty got so very might-i-ly.

“We’re all loved by God, but not all born the same.
Some Whos get a bonus in life’s complex game.
“I think justice,” said the wise little Cindy Lou Who,
“Is recognizing you’re not just a product of you.

“There are systems in place that we didn’t start,
And some without the tiniest shred of a heart.
The roast beast we eat — were they cared for and fed?
Who stitched the red Santa cap you wear on your head?

“Some Whos are quite wealthy because they make choices
That hurt others, but wealthy Whos silence their voices.
When God questions wealth, it’s because all too frequently
Wealth has been made from Whos who are hurt secretly.

“So I think,” Cindy said, after rubbing her chin,
“The challenge is for us to see the systems we’re in.
We have to ask questions. We have to keep checking.
If Whos do go hungry, it’s time for inspecting.”

“It’s hard to keep learning,” the Grinch grumpily said.
“This information feels like too much for my head.”
“That’s OK,” little Cindy Lou Who let him know.
“You don’t have to change everything by tomorrow.”

“The power of community helps us keep going.
We gather together to share questions and knowing.
By hearing our stories, we change and we grow,
And become a force for justice in the world that we know.”

“Hmm,” hmm’d the Grinch, his grinchy face wrinkling.
“This idea of community has got me thinking.”
He thought of how life had been pre-Cindy Lou.
How he grumbled, and grimaced, and hated the Whos.

He thought of how feeling left out made him feel —
Like he would never sit with a friend for a meal.
“I hated Who Christmas because I felt ignored.
I tried to ruin it and even the score.

“When you sang your Who songs, I was angry and rash.
I stole all of your presents, your gifts, all your stash.
I stole all of the food and the Christmas trees too.
I was so very angry, my dear Cindy Lou.

“But I realized the day when you all still sang songs
That Christmas is all about repairing wrongs.
I wanted to fix all I’d broken and wrecked,
Even if you despised me for the thoughts in my head.

“But you didn’t!” the Grinch grinned. “You invited me in.
You gave me a seat, said I was for-giv-en.
The injustice of me being left out was repaired.
You welcomed me even though I’d been unfair.”

The Grinch smiled. “Thank you, little Cindy Lou Who.
It’s hard to accept, but I know what to do.
I’m part of a problem that’s quite hard to see,
But you know what? I’m stronger than its secrecy.

“Justice is a word I want to keep hearing.
And knowing that fairness is a hope to keep nearing.
When I have been hurt, I want to declare it.
And when I am the hurter, I want to repair it.

“I want to help others. I want to learn lots.
And I want to sing Mary’s Magnificat.
God remembers the promises and seeks out the lost,
God is righting the world, no matter the cost.”²

Amen

Preached by Rev. Sara E. Baron on December 23, 2018

1 Marcus Borg, “Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary” (USA: HarperOne, 2006) page 89.

2http://emmykegler.com/the-heart-of-justice/?fbclid=IwAR2cNbHRV7rF6RkYSqni735oLyF_prEhizVzsl6bM2QPp-LIpGRABSRjNdk

Christmas Dawn Meditation 2018 (based on Luke 2:1-16)

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019
by Sara Baron

This year I’ve had two compelling questions regarding the Christmas story. First I’ve been wondering WHY we have a Christmas story, and secondly I’ve been wondering why – given ALL the details missing from the birth story, why on EARTH Luke mentions a MANGER of all things. The two questions are of rather different LEVELS, but they’re the ones I’ve been stuck on.

The gospels of Mark and John lack Christmas stories entirely. Luke and Matthew both have them, but they are very different stories. Many excellent scholars believe that the Christmas stories of Luke and Matthew were added GENERATIONS after the rest of the books were completed. They function as “gospels in miniature”, foreshadowing the major themes each of the gospels focus on. They also function to make the stories of Matthew and Luke conform more to the literature of the day – in which stories of great heroes usually start with abnormal birth narratives to point out how important the hero is.

So, why were these “prequels” important enough to get told, and get written, and get added? Why did the early Christians want to conform to the hero-stories around them? And, once they were writing stories, why did they write them this way?

Which all gets back to the manger. In case no one has pointed it out to you yet, it is NOT normal to put new born babies in animal feeding troughs, which is exactly what a manger is. Why did Luke tell us a story of an over crowded inn, a lack of familial hospitality, and putting a baby in a feeding trough of all things!?!?

I started wondering about the symbolism of the manger. What could it mean? What was I missing? And then, the answer hit me and I felt ridiculous for never seeing it before. Those Christians of the early 2^nd century were giving us a COMMUNION metaphor in the very beginning. Jesus is the bread of life, and after he was born, he was placed in a feeding trough for animals because he is related to the act of feeding creatures for the sake of life itself. At first Jesus is placed among the food, in the end Jesus feeds us with the food of life.

And then the other question clicked too. If the Christmas stories are “gospels in miniature” then they have the same basic point as the gospels themselves. Which is that God is on the side of LIFE. The Gospels all tell the story of Jesus bringing life to the people through healing, feeding, and teaching. They tell of him bringing life to the people by bringing hope and encouraging them to see the brokenness of the world and refuse to participate in it anymore – and instead to work together to build something better. Then, in the end, the Gospels all say that death did not have the final power of Jesus – and leave us to make sense of that!

The gospels are about abundant life – about living abundantly, about making space for others to live abundantly, about letting go of the fear of death in order to live abundantly. The concept of abundant life for all people is prevalent throughout the entire Bible, EVEN THOUGH most human societies have functioned to make life abundant for SOME at the expense of many. Yet, the Gospels, like the Bible, want abundance for ALL.

And that’s what Luke is doing with the Christmas story he tells too. In any other hero-narrative of the time there would have been a focus on the wealth and supernatural elements of the hero’s birth. But Luke focuses on the family’s poverty. They could not afford what they needed, and in doing so he set up the wonderful foreshadowing of the manger.

Luke has the shepherds receive the good news – not the wealthy, or the powerful, but SHEPHERDS. And the message they receive emphasis that it is about LIFE for everyone. Remember that “savior” comes form “salve” and means “heal!”

“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

The message that comes to the shepherds is one of good news for ALL people, that a HEALER has come – and he will be for the poor, which you can tell because he is poor. We hear he is poor because they couldn’t pay enough to get a room – because in this story they are homeless.

This Christmas story is about life – and then it makes sense why it has to be this story. With this story added in, the Gospel Luke starts by telling a story of a new life, and ENDS by telling a story of life CONTINUED. The book of Luke is all about life, and you can tell because it starts and ends with it.

Given all this, I’m pretty grateful for this late addition to the Gospel, this Gospel in miniature. I think it does it job exceptionally well, and because of it we are able to gather this morning and celebrate our God who is a God of ABUNDANT LIFE for ALL.

Thanks be to God!

Amen

Preached on December 25, 2018 by Rev. Sara E. Baron

“Do Not Fear, Beloved” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and…

January 23, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The words we heard from Isaiah today were spoken to a community abandoned to despair. Isaiah chapters 40-55 is called “Second Isaiah” and Second Isaiah was written to the exiles who had been force-ably marched across the desert to Babylon after the defeat and destruction of Jerusalem. The exiles in Babylon were despondent. They’d watched their city, their temple, and their nation be destroyed. They’d seen entirely too much death. Those who were left behind had all of their possessions and food taken form them, and were left without city walls to protect them. And the ones in exile were supposed to be the leaders of the people who took care of them, but instead they were in captivity in a foreign land.

In the midst of all of this, they were likely struggling with their faith. Not only do terrible events tend to make most people struggle with their faith, the faith of the Israelites at that time centered on two things: 1. The story of God of Liberation who had freed them from slavery in Egypt and 2. The gift of the Promised Land to God’s beloved people as a sign of God’s intention to keep them safe as a light to the other nations. You can probably see how a faith based on freedom and land would be seriously shaken by being taken back into slavery after losing the land.

To those struggling former leaders, now slaves, Isaiah send a message of hope. Isaiah was a prophet, so he spoke what he believed to be a message from God for the people. The message is shocking. It may help to know that “To be redeemed according to Israel’s law means to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin, a close member of the extended family.”¹ More specifically, “The verb refers to a family intervention and solidarity whereby a stronger member of the family intervenes to assure the well being of a weaker member.”² Let’s hear the first verse again.

This is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God, who formed you:
Do not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your freedom,
and I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

Wha-what!?! The people are ENSLAVED. In a foreign land. After a major defeat, that most of them took to be a judgement by God. This cannot be what they expected to hear. Not even the beginning, the reminder that they were formed by God’s own hand. And definitely not the next part that God was going to pay for their freedom … since they thought God had sent them into exile. After feeling abandoned by God they got this message that God claimed them, loved them, acted for them. I imagine that it was confusing to try to parse out if this could be true. As a scholar puts it, “Israel is now fully identified with, belongs to, and is cherished by Yahweh.”3 But they’ve been interpreting their experience as exactly the opposite.

This experience, while very specific, seems to have some universal themes underlying it. Life has its ups and its downs, some of the downs are very far down, some of the downs are for a whole family or community, and quite often the downs feel like God has forgotten us, abandoned us, punished us, or… maybe like God ISn’t afterall. Today’s Isaiah scripture speaks into those times. “Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you by name, and the name I call you is ‘mine.’” We are not forgotten, abandoned, nor punished. We are still connected, beloved, claimed… and when things are at the there worst, God is with us for it.

The passage then turns to possible threats that could harm Israel, and assures that YHWH is available to help them if that happens. Floods and rivers, not too much for God. Fires and wildfires, not too much for God. This, too, applies to us. Bad things may come, disasters may come, raging loses may come, they aren’t too much for God and God is still with us.

Second Isaiah speaks words of comfort and hope. This is particularly notable because First Isaiah (the first 40 chapters) come before the exile and speak rather dire warnings of what might come to pass if the leaders of the people don’t chance course. As most of the Hebrew Bible was written down during and immediately after the Exile, I am convinced that the primary questions it is asking is “why did this happen to us?” and “how do we understand God in these circumstances?” The Hebrew Bible answers those questions in a lot of ways, and Second Isaiah’s take is “it happened, that’s not the right question. But as to how do we understand God, that’s the important one – we know a God who comforts us, cares for us, never abandons us, and claims us. Because of God, we have hope for the present and the future.”

There are so many themes that bounce back and forth between our two scriptures today, it can seem that Luke 3 is using Isaiah as a source text. However, Isaiah is inherently talking to the COMMUNITY, and in Luke 3, God is speaking to Jesus – just one guy. Or, at least, I think that’s what is happening. The story says that it is of God speaking to Jesus, but I also think the story becomes much larger when we consider the baptism of Jesus as one of the primary reasons we baptize people into membership in the Body of Christ, and that this story then resonates within all baptized Christians. So maybe both them are written to communities, but only one of them admits it? I’m not sure.

Luke’s telling of Jesus’ baptism is brief but powerful. Jesus was baptized, he was praying, the Spirit came (like a dove) and then voice (from heaven) said, “You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Within the Gospel this serves as an affirmation of Jesus’ identity as Messiah. However, have the words have echoed through the ages, and been passed on to each Christian at their baptism, they have come to mean even more. They have become like the words in Second Isaiah, an affirmation that God knows us, sees us, claims us, and is with us. They are words that tell us that we are LOVED, and that God also LIKES us. They are words that tell us of grace – that we are loved because God loves us and that’s the final answer – that our FIRST identity is “loved by God” – individually and communally.

Our second identity, then, is to show God’s love. In the United Methodist Communion liturgy, the second question that is asked fo parents of babies being baptized or of adults answering for their own baptism is, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?” I have come to LOVE this question. In fact, it has been MY cover photo on facebook for two years AND the church’s cover photo for a year and a half. I’ve considered changing both, but it is too on point. In these times, when the powers of injustice and oppression feel like they’re crushing in, both within the church and in the world, it feels liberating to hear that question again. “The freedom and power God gives you….” We do not have to be pulled into. We don’t have to participate. We can choose another path. We are FREE, because God frees us from the powers of evil, injustice and oppression.

That’s some great stuff. And Jesus is one of the examples of what a life can look like when it is free from evil, injustice, and oppression.

“This is my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is easy to look at the babies we baptize and see how true those words are for them. It can be very easy in adult baptism to hear the words echoing as well. One of the challenges is remembering that it keeps on echoing for all of us, all the time. In sacred moments, we see it, but it is omnipresent. Each person we meet is beloved by God, a child of God, one who God LIKES. Each of us are beloved by God, a child of God, liked by God – even when we aren’t able to like ourselves.

And then there is the correlated bigger picture. We, as a church, are a community of God’s, a Body of Christ together (even as we are part of larger and larger versions of the Body of Christ in the world.) We are not the entirety of God’s beloved community, but we ARE a beloved community of God’s. Which means that we are some of the recipients of the words in Luke as well of the ones in Isaiah. We are children of God, beloved, and with us God is well pleased. Also,

This is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God,
who formed you:
Do not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your freedom,
and I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

We are God’s, together. In fact, as a community, we come together knowing ourselves to be an expression of God’s love, together. We are formed together by being people seeking God, seeking to understand things of God, seeking to live out God’s ways in the world. We are formed by the Divine stories, by Divine love, by building the kindom of God together. We bear God’s name.

This means that God is with us in the ups and downs. God was with us when this community was large, when Sunday School was overflowing and this sanctuary was full every week. God is with us now when we are fewer people, with just as much commitment to God’s ways. God is with us when new people are joining us, and God is with us when we gather in gratitude for lives well lived. God is with us when we are struggling to find our ways of being in this world and in this community, and God is with us when we know we’re up to just the right ways of being love in the world.

We are God’s. Thanks be to God. Amen

Preached by Sara Baron on January 13, 2019

1Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective on Isaiah 43:1-7,” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 221.

2Walter Bruggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 53.

“Do Not Fear, Beloved” Page 6Rev. Sara E. Baron…

January 14, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
words we heard from Isaiah today were spoken to a community abandoned
to despair. Isaiah chapters 40-55 is called “Second Isaiah” and
Second Isaiah was written to the exiles who had been force-ably
marched across the desert to Babylon after the defeat and destruction
of Jerusalem. The exiles in Babylon were despondent. They’d watched
their city, their temple, and their nation be destroyed. They’d seen
entirely too much death. Those who were left behind had all of their
possessions and food taken from them, and were left without city
walls to protect them. And the ones in exile were supposed to be the
leaders of the people who took care of them, but instead they were in
captivity in a foreign land.

In
the midst of all of this, they were likely struggling with their
faith. Not only do terrible events tend to make most people struggle
with their faith, the faith of the Israelites at that time centered
on two things: 1. The story of the God of Liberation who had freed
them from slavery in Egypt and 2. The gift of the Promised Land to
God’s beloved people as a sign of God’s intention to keep them from
other nations. You can probably see how a faith based on freedom and
land would be seriously shaken by being taken back into slavery after
losing the land.

To
those struggling former leaders, now slaves, Isaiah send a message of
hope. Isaiah was a prophet, so he spoke what he believed to be a
message from God for the people. The message is shocking. It may
help to know that “To be redeemed according to Israel’s law means
to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin, a close member of the
extended family.”¹
More specifically, “The verb refers to a family intervention and
solidarity whereby a stronger member of the family intervenes to
assure the well being of a weaker member.”²
So with that, we can hear the first verse again.

This
is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God, who formed
you:

Do
not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your
freedom,

and
I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

The
people are ENSLAVED. In a foreign land. After a major defeat, that
most of them took to be a judgement by God. This cannot be what they
expect hear. Not even the beginning, the reminder that they were
formed by God’s own hand. And definitely not the next part that God
was going to pay for their freedom … since they thought God had
sent them into exile. After feeling abandoned by God they got this
message that God claimed them, loved them, acted on their behalf. I
imagine that it was confusing to try to parse out if this could be
true. As a scholar puts it, “Israel is now fully identified with,
belongs to, and is cherished by Yahweh.”³
But they’ve been interpreting their experience as the opposite.

This
experience, while very specific, seems to have some universal themes
underlying it. Life has its ups and its downs, some of the downs are
very far down, some of the downs are for a whole family or whole
community, and quite often the downs feel like God has forgotten us,
abandoned us, punished us, or… maybe like God ISn’t after all.
Today’s Isaiah scripture speaks into those times. “Do not be
afraid, I am with you. I have called you by name, and the name I
call you is ‘mine.’” We are not forgotten, abandoned, nor
punished. We are still connected, beloved, claimed… and when
things are at their worst, God is with us for it.

The
passage then turns to possible threats that could harm Israel, and
assures that YHWH is available to help them if that happens. Floods
and rivers, not too much for God. Fires and wildfires, not too much
for God. This, too, applies to us. Bad things may come, disasters
may come, raging loses may come, they aren’t too much for God and God
is still with us.

Second
Isaiah speaks words of comfort and hope. This is particularly
notable because First Isaiah (the first 40 chapters) come before the
exile and speak rather dire warnings of what might come to pass if
the leaders of the people don’t chance course. As most of the Hebrew
Bible was written down during and immediately after the Exile, I am
convinced that it has two primary questions it is asking is “why
did this happen to us?” and “how do we understand God in these
circumstances?” The Hebrew Bible answers those questions in a lot
of different ways, and Second Isaiah’s take is “it happened, that’s
not the right question. But as to how do we understand God, that’s
the important one – we know a God who comforts us, cares for us,
never abandons us, and claims us. Because of God, we have hope for
the present and the future.”

There
are so many themes that bounce back and forth between our two
scriptures today, it can seem that Luke 3 is using Isaiah 43 as a
source text. However, Isaiah is inherently talking to the COMMUNITY,
and in Luke 3, God is speaking to Jesus – just one guy. Or, at
least, I think that’s what is happening. The story says that it is
of God speaking to Jesus, but I also know the story is much larger
when we consider the baptism of Jesus as one of the primary reasons
we baptize people into membership in the Body of Christ, and that
this story then resonates within all baptized Christians. So maybe
both them are written to communities, but only one of them admits it?
I’m not sure.

Luke’s
telling about Jesus’ baptism is brief but powerful. Jesus was
baptized, he was praying, the Spirit came (like a dove) and then
voice (from heaven) said, “You are my Child, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” Within the Gospel this serves as an
affirmation of Jesus’ identity as Messiah. However, have the words
have echoed through the ages, and been passed on to each Christian at
their baptism, they have come to mean even more. They have become
like the words in Second Isaiah, an affirmation that God knows us,
sees us, claims us, and is with us. These are words that tell us
that we are LOVED, and that God also LIKES us. They are words that
tell us of grace – that we are loved because God loves us and
that’s the final answer – that our FIRST identity is “loved by
God” -both as individuals and as a community.

Our
second identity, then, is to show God’s love. In the United
Methodist Communion liturgy, the second question that is asked fo
parents of babies being baptized or of adults answering for their own
baptism is, “Do
you accept the freedom and power God gives you to to resist evil,
injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”
I have come to LOVE this question. In fact, it has been MY cover
photo on facebook for two years AND the church’s cover photo for a
year and a half.
I’ve considered changing both, but it is too on point.
In these times, when the powers of injustice and oppression feel
like they’re crushing in, both within the church and in the world, it
feels liberating to hear that question again. “The freedom and
power God gives you….” We do not have to be pulled into. We
don’t have to participate. We can choose another path. We are FREE,
because God frees us from the powers of evil, injustice and
oppression.

That’s some great stuff.
And Jesus is one of the examples of what a life can look like when it
is free from evil, injustice, and oppression.

“This is my child, the
beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is easy to look at the
babies we baptize and see how true those words are for them. It can
be very easy in adult baptism to hear the words echoing as well. One
of the challenges is remembering that it keeps on echoing for all of
us, all the time. In sacred moments, we see it, but it is
omnipresent. Each person we meet is beloved by God, a child of God,
one who God LIKES. Each of us are beloved by God, a child of God,
liked by God – even when we aren’t able to like ourselves.

And then there is the correlated
bigger picture. We, as a church, are a community of God’s, a Body of
Christ together (even as we are part of larger and larger versions of
the Body of Christ in the world.) We are not the entirety of God’s
beloved community, but we ARE a beloved community of God’s. Which
means that we are some of the recipients of the words in Luke as well
of the ones in Isaiah. We are children of God, beloved, and with us
God is well pleased. Also,

This
is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God, who formed
you:

Do
not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your
freedom,

and
I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

We
are God’s, together. In fact, as a community, we come together
knowing ourselves to be an expression of God’s love, together. We
are formed together by being people seeking God, seeking to
understand things of God, seeking to live out God’s ways in the
world. We are formed by the Divine stories, by Divine love, by
building the kindom of God together. We bear God’s name.

This
means that God is with us in the ups and downs. God was with us when
this community was large, when Sunday School was overflowing and this
sanctuary was full every week. God is with us now when we are fewer
people, with just as much commitment to God’s ways. God is with us
when new people are joining us, and God is with us when we gather in
gratitude for lives well lived. God is with us when we are
struggling to find our ways of being in this world and in this
community, and God is with us when we know we’re up to just the right
ways of being love in the world.

We
are God’s. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Kathleen
M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective on Isaiah 43:1-7,” in
Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 221.

2Walter
Bruggemann, Isaiah 40-66
(Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 53.

3Bruggemann,
53.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

January 13, 2019

“Not a King Like THAT” based on Psalm 93 and…

November 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectadyIt is best, when reading from the Gospel of John, to do with awareness of metaphor and symbolism. Because the Gospel of John was written much later than the other Gospels (a generation or two), it has a tendency to make its points more poetically. Part of what I mean by this is that the Gospel of John lacks historical accuracy, but that is because historical accuracy wasn’t all that valuable to John. John thinks there are important points to make, and John makes them, presumably assuming that those listening know that the stories are being told to make points, and not to tell facts.

Which is to say, this is contrived encounter between Pilate and Jesus that deviates from how the other Gospels tell and and how it actually could have been. AND, that’s OK. John is expressing essential elements of Jesus-following, and he does it beautifully.

John contrasts the domination systems of the world with the nonviolence of Jesus and contrasts the power-hungry methods of leadership in the world, with the power-giving leadership of Jesus. There is significant debate over whether or not Jesus ever thought of himself or spoke of himself as a king, most of the Jesus Seminar thinks he didn’t. There are two reasons, however, why the early Christian community would have wanted to present him that way:

The expectation of the Jewish Messiah was of a Jewish King in the model of King David: one who would restore political, economic, and military might to the nation of Israel, one who would preside over an empire, one who would prove the power and might of God by overcome adversaries. While Jesus was CERTAINLY not THAT kind of king, speaking of Jesus in king language connected him to the tradition and claimed him in a role that people could make sense of. Granted, even in this passage, the sense being made has to acknowledge that Jesus is not a king in the normal ways of the world, but it was an imperative claim to early Christians that Jesus was the fulfillment of what their ancestors had been waiting for.
The Roman Empire which held the Jewish homelands as part and parcel of its Empire claimed many titles for itself. The Roman Emperor was the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the World, the Lord of Lords. Much of the language we now think of as Christian is really reflective of the early church claiming that Jesus was the real deal and the Roman Empire was not. Which to say, most of what sounds pious speech NOW was heresy when it came into Christianity. Within that context, for the Roman Empire the “King of the Jews” was the person that Rome appointed to be the leader of the lands occupied by the Jews. King Herod had been “King of the Jews” but his kingdom had been split upon his death. To even enter into this conversation about “King of the Jews” is to threaten the power of Rome to appoint leaders over God’s people. Pilate was NOT “King of the Jews”, he led ¼^th of the former kingdom and was the “tetrarch” of Judea. For him to be in conversation with Jesus about whether or not Jesus was the king of the Jews was for him to be asking if Jesus OUTRANKED him. The conversation itself, as presented here in John, makes Pilate a comedic figure and therefore dismisses his authority. The entire narrative supports the importance of Jesus, and contrasts him with the power-seeking ways of the world.

Now that we know why this conversation is presented to begin with, we can play with it a little more. Jesus is not presented as giving any straight answers, which I find amusing. He keeps asking questions to answer questions and responding in ways that Pilate can’t follow. To be fair, these do seem to be consistent with other stories of how Jesus plays cat and mouse with anyone trying to trap him.

My favorite line comes in verse 36. Pilate is trying to get Jesus to confess to what he’s accused of. Historically speaking, Jesus was accused of leading a revolt against the Empire, but he isn’t going to say that. Instead of answering the question at all, he says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” The answer he gives has often been “spiritualized,” which I mean in a negative way even though I think spirituality is awesome. Christians have differentiated between the kingdoms on earth and the kingdom of heaven, and in doing so have indicated that it doesn’t matter what happens on earth as long as they manage to enter the kingdom of heaven.

This perspective has done GREAT harm, including by permitting abuses to human beings like slavery and functioning as an argument for not worrying about global climate change, to only take note of the worst offenses. Unfortunately, it also trickles down to other ways of not caring about God’s creation and creatures. I believe this is an inaccurate as well as problematic reading of the text.

John is talking about the ways of the world that are VIOLENT, he is talking about the domination systems of the world and contrasting them with the Jesus movement, which is NONVIOLENT and equitable. Both systems that are being contrasted here are systems of THIS world, and in fact both systems are ones that claim for themselves Divine blessing.

This year I’ve shared a few times the definition of domination system, but it has been a while, so I’m going to offer it again. “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid. Domination systems of various types have existed since the beginning of recorded history,”¹ although not all human systems have been domination systems.

Jesus and his followers lived in a domination system, but they lived in ways that transformed it rather than complied with it. The definition factor of a domination system is violence, but Jesus was emphatically nonviolent. This is what is presented in this Gospel lesson. If Jesus was building his own domination system to threaten the domination system of the Roman Empire, than Jesus’ followers would have come to rescue him with their own violent powers. They would have lead a revolution. They would come ready to fight.

They didn’t. Jesus faced violence without returning violence. He also faced it without yielding to its power, and by neither returning violence nor accepting the power of violence over him, he decreased its power in the world. Jesus’ kingdom was one of nonviolence, one without domination, one that has been about changing the world into the kindom of God which is a nonviolent and equitable kindom – rather than being like the normal ones of this world. But, the kindom or kingdom is one that is of THIS world.

Which leads us to some very practical questions. How well are we following in the nonviolent way of Christ? How well are we transforming the world, at least the world around us, from domination into equity? Where are we complicit in allowing violence and/or domination to take hold in our lives and our community? When do we struggle the most to live like Jesus did?

And, once we’ve squirmed with those questions: how can we more fully live into nonviolence and radical equity? At the core, I think all of the offerings of this faith community are meant to support the intersecting goals of nonviolence and radical equity. We study the Bible so we can learn how to do it, we learn about the injustices of the world so we can be part of changing them, we redistribute food and necessities to God’s beloved people to make our community more equitable, we worship to fill our souls with goodness so we can receive God’s gifts of peace and joy (which enable us to treat others with peace and compassion), we gather together for meetings and studies to learn from each other’s wisdom about what is needed and to try to offer it into the world.

Others are working with us in these tasks – other faith communities, other nonprofits, other teachers and students of wisdom and spirituality. It isn’t all on us, but our contributions matter.

Yet, I still wonder what we need – individually and communally – to do this better? Do we need opportunities for shared spiritual practice, to center ourselves on God’s peace? Do we need stories of hope and redemption, to remind ourselves of what God is capable of? Do we need times and spaces for rest from the work that has become wearying? Do we need clearer goals so we don’t feel like everything is on our shoulders, and we can remember that we work with God who has a lot to offer along with us!?

This is the last Sunday of the Christian year, and we start anew next week with the beginning of a new Advent and the return to the beginning of our faith story. So, as we come to the end of this year’s cycle of liturgy and remembrance, I offer it as a time for reflection: how well are we following the nonviolence and radically equitable ways of Jesus, and what do we need in order to keep following and keep deepening our faith?

I hope, perhaps, you’ll tell me what you you think about this, because I’m certain that God works among us in shared wisdom and together we have the answers we need to guide us in this next iteration of our shared journey. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Jim Jordal, “What is a Domination System” found on 2/10/2017 athttp://www.windsofjustice.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=356 written on March 14, 2013.

–

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 25, 2018