“Explaining Christmas“ based on Luke 2:1-12

December 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

One of the privileges I have
this year is to explain Christmas to a 2 year old. I’m aware many
have done this before me, and at this point I’m pretty sure most have
done it better than I have. But, I’ve learned along the way that
when I have to explain really complicated things to very small
children I end up learning what I really think.

Now, I think the common answer
to give a young child about Christmas is “It is Jesus’ birthday.”
Which seems legit, and I know my child has some grasp of birthdays.
I am, however, less confident he has a grasp on Jesus. And while I
simply adore Marcus Borg’s explanation that Jesus was “a Jewish
mystic,” … well, that wasn’t going to help.

And, if I’m honest, we may think
of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday, but that only matters because of who
Jesus was. For those who think of Jesus as fully human and fully
Divine, Christmas could be summed up as God being born on earth. A
lot of Christian Christmas derives from this idea. It gives us the
space to consider the vulnerability of life, and how dependent we are
on each other. For those awed by a powerful God becoming vulnerable
as a newborn, it follows that the vulnerability of our humanity is in
fact quite tender.

For me though, Jesus was a man
who knew God intimately and taught of God and lived a God-centered
life in profound ways that continue to be useful for knowing God even
today. And THAT, also, it turns out, doesn’t translate well to a 2
year old.

So I found myself saying,
“Christmas is when we celebrate someone who taught us about God’s
love.” Well, I’m not entirely sure if I said God. But I’m OK with
that because I think the phrase “God’s Love” is redundant.

And, by the grace of God, that
line got accepted, and I don’t have to answer more questions. Yet.

Next year promises its own
challenges. 😉 I suspect by next year I’ll be learning that my
seminary degree and nearly 20 years of ministry experience are
insufficient to the task. I’ll let you know.

But for now, Phew!

And also, I’m sort of interested
to learn what I really think of Christmas.

The Christmas stories in each
Gospel are sometimes called “the Gospel in miniature” and they
really do an amazing job establishing the setting, foreshadowing the
story as a whole, and setting up the themes of the Gospels they
begin. Luke focuses on women and shepherds, the outcasts being the
first to receive good news for all people, the looming presence and
power of the Empire and its taxation methods, the cycle of birth and
death as a way to talk about the fullness of life, humility, and the
value of pondering the wondrous things of God. I even see in the
story the foreshadowing of Jesus rising from the tomb, as the animal
feeding trough he is said to have been laid in at birth was BELOW the
floor and chiseled out of rock. He would have been lifted out of
that to be held. (I swoon a bit at this metaphor.)

So of the Christmas stories are
Gospels in miniature, than what we say about Christmas is what we
have to say about Jesus. And if this implies that I think Jesus is
“someone who taught us about (God’s) love,” then I’m at peace
with that conclusion. (I’m also relieved to already be ordained and
not have to attempt to justify this to a Board of Ordained Ministry).

There are a lot of fabulous
nuances to this story, and I would have a ball playing with them.
I’m entranced by the Isaiah passage and the space it gives us to
connect birth and death as well as connecting the delivery of a child
with the “delivery” of a nation into safety and well being. AND
I’m going to let it all rest.

Today we celebrate the birth of
one one who taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate one who
taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate God’s love. Thanks
be to God, who is love. Merry Christmas, and Amen!

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

December 25, 2022

“Peace” based on Matthew 1:18-25

December 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

We have a lot of phrases about
peace in our faith tradition. Jesus is called the “prince of
peace.” We speak of the “peace that passes understanding.” A
sung blessing offers the line, “deep peace of the running waves to
you.” Songs and prayers ask God to “grant us peace.” We often
sing, “Peace be with you ‘til we meet again,” and we greet each
other with “peace be with you.” We yearn, collectively, for
“world peace.”

I’ve been trained in the
knowledge that the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, refers to holistic
well being – body, mind, and spirit – of the individual and the
community. It is more than the absence of war. It is the absence of
needs, the adequate distribution of resources so that no one has to
try to get what they need via violence.

In this way, shalom, peace, is
deeply integrated with the kindom of God.

This week I’ve been struck at
how RELATIVE peace is – both internally and externally. I think
I’ve often been distracted by the wondrous language about peace in
our tradition, and thought of peace as some perfect and excellent
thing. But that assumption has distracted me from a whole lot of the
incremental gifts of peace.

The many people in our church
and our society who have lived through trauma have fairly constant
alerts in their bodies and minds to remain vigilant, stay safe, LOOK
OUT! What looks like peace for someone in a constant state of alert
may be a relatively safe place or person that allows a few of the
alarm bells within to slow down. Which is to say that what looks
like relative peace for some would be REALLY HIGH agitation for
others. Yet, still, increased peace is a gift for all those who
experience it. Peace in the midst of trauma.

There is a famous story of
Christmas 1914, in the midst of World War I, when soldiers singing
Christmas hymns in the trenches started singing back and forth to
each other across the “no man’s land” eventually leading to
soldiers experiencing a Christmas peace and exchanging gifts and
laughter. Peace in the midst of war.

I often think of a young mother
I knew by being her pastor, who shared that her life was full with a
full time job and the needs of young children. She spoke of her
commute time as the most peaceful part of her life, and savored it as
a time to connect with the Divine. Peace in the midst of a
burstingly full life.

This week Matthew gives us a
look at Mary’s pregnancy through the eyes of Joseph. Mary is
vulnerable, as a pregnant engaged woman who wasn’t pregnant from her
fiancé. Joseph has a lot of power here, he can publicly shame her
and her family, which would most likely result in Mary being removed
from her family so they can regain some status. His original plan,
to let her go quietly, seems aimed at letting the father of her baby
marry her. It is aimed at respecting everyone involved. Of course,
then he gets new information and changes course, no longer assuming
another man needed the space to become the father of that man’s
child.

I adore the way this translation
speaks of Joseph, “Joseph her husband was a just man and unwilling
to shame her, he wanted to divorce her secretly.” I find myself
thinking that Joseph was a man who knew peace within. Either he
wasn’t personally offended by Mary’s pregnancy, or he was able to
hold that in perspective and not wish to retaliate. His aim was not
violence or harm, but rather everyone’s well-being. Peace.

As I’ve considered the factors
that lead to peace within, I’ve been struck at how mundane they are.
Like most things – athletic skills, musical talent, etc, – there
are people with natural connection to peace, and there are people who
nurture their receptivity to peace, and while both matter, the work
done to nurture receptivity to peace ends up mattering the most over
time.

We have been in the midst of
highly trying times for many years now. I tend to think back to the
2016 election cycle as the beginning of the escalation of tension and
anxiety, but you may place it elsewhere. Even if you want to place
it at the beginning of the pandemic, we are YEARS into what our
bodies have probably experienced as a “war.” I say war because
the stress levels have been escalated, and very few things have
helped us bring them back down.

Some of you, thanks be to God,
have found life-giving ways to reconnect with peace, wholeness, and
the Divine. I’m of the opinion that walking in nature is one of the
best practices for this, and a lot of you seem to agree. You have
found ways to connect with each other and loved ones, you’ve found
creative expressions, you’ve done meditation or prayer practices,
you’ve looked for beauty, you’ve been still in the face of your awe,
you’ve PLAYED. I can see the differences in us from a year ago, and
I can see that God is working to cultivate peace in us AND that we
are working on receiving those gifts from God.

My exclusive point today is an
encouragement to keep nurturing your receptivity to God’s peace. I’m
happy to chat about it with you more, to think about what it looks
like in you. I think we can look at the example of Joseph to see how
peace within a person impacts those around them. I want to be more
like that, and I suspect you may too. May God grant us peace, and
may WE prepare ourselves to receive it. Amen

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

December 18, 2022

“Joy” based on Luke 1:46-56

December 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

Some of you weren’t here last
week, and quite likely most of you have been through enough this week
that the nuances of last week’s sermon are no longer front and
center. (Most? All? It’s OK.)

Last week we lit the Advent
Candle of Love, and we looked at the example of Elizabeth’s loving
words to her young cousin Mary. Mary was engaged, pregnant, and
vulnerable. Her pregnancy looked like proof of infidelity,
everything in her life was likely in an uproar, and her cousin
greeted her with words that changed everything. They celebrated
Mary, they exclaimed over Mary, they reframed Mary’s shame, and
painted her instead as a a person committed to God’s faithful acts in
the world – even at high cost. The words showed that Elizabeth saw
her, loved her, and helped her let go of her fear and her shame.

Truth be told though, the Luke
reading cut off right in the middle of the scene last week.
Elizabeth greets Mary – and it was extraordinary. BUT, the next
lines are Mary’s response to Elizabeth, and they make a lot of sense
to read together as one conversation.

After Elizabeth wiped away
Mary’s shame and made room for love, Mary responded with her words of
praise for God, ones that are so famous they’re named. Mary’s words
are “The Magnificat,” called so for the opening line about
magnifying the Holy One.

Now, most scholars agree that
Luke 1 is a creation of the early Christian community, maybe even of
the author of Luke itself. What I find really remarkable about that
is that Luke has so much compassion for these women, and such a
strong sense of what they would be going through. It gives me hope
that there were strong women’s voices within the Christian community
at that time, that the equalitarian nature of the Way of Jesus
continued long enough that women’s voices were actually being heard
in the ways these stories were told. Or, maybe, Luke was simply an
outstandingly compassionate human, able to see beyond the bounds of
his own education and gender. Either option is really lovely, and
I’m really grateful for the ways these stories are told, so that
there is INCREDIBLE truth and wisdom in them. Luke and/or his
community, and his later editors cared about Mary and Elizabeth, not
just as wombs, but as humans with their own struggles and needs.

Thanks be to God for these
stories.

And, truly, thanks be to God for
the ones who thought enough about Mary to find words for this hymn of
praise to God that fit who she was as a person and a parent. They
are profound words.

They are also PROFOUNDLY joyful.
Mary is praising God, for being God. Mary knows her place in the
world, and it is not the top. She is awed that God would work with
her to do important things, and SEES herself as being “lowly” and
lifted up by God’s work with her. I’m also stuck that while the
first few verses name Mary’s awe at God’s work in her life, she moves
on quickly to simply her delight in God’s own self. She celebrates
God’s loving-kindness, constancy, strength, willingness to turn
upside down the powers and privileges of the world, to lift up the
lowly, to fill up the hungry, to offer care to those in need of it.

Mary’s song is a song of joy for
a God who feels close at hand in her life and in history, the past,
the present, and the future, the one who brings hope, the one who
makes it possible for her to face her own daunting circumstances.
She expresses JOY at being a partner with God in God’s work EVEN
THOUGH the circumstances were so far from ideal for her.

And I believe her words of
praise for God were a response to the words Elizabeth spoke to her.
As Elizabeth wiped away her shame and made space for Mary to
experience love, Mary’s life-light was able to emerge fully, and that
came out as PURE JOY.

It is hard (really really hard)
to fight through our shame to get to joy. But when the shame goes,
OH the things that can emerge!

I’ve been thinking a lot about
shame in the past few weeks, largely because focusing on the story of
Mary doesn’t give me any other option. Mary fits into a very long
cultural tradition that values female virginity, seeks to control
female sexuality, and generally treats women as if their only value
is in their capacity to provide womb access to the man who owns that
access. If she fails – because she is raped, because the couple is
infertile, or for any other reason, SHE is shamed.

This is one of the few times
when I don’t think the Biblical needs much contextual help. History
has changed, but not so much that we can’t follow that one.

This is why I find Elizabeth’s
words so powerful, when she compares Mary to other Biblical heroines
who were in compromising situations but were not defined by them.

I also have been thinking about
what shame looks like today. Obviously there is still an
over-abundance of shame around sex and sexuality. But we like to
make things complicated in our society today – we have a tendency
to make standards so contradictory and impossible that everyone can
find something to be ashamed about. There is shame for having too
much sex, or too little, for being too focused on it, or not enough,
for being sexually interested in the “wrong” person (or type, or
gender), or for being asexual, … for example.

And, there is shame for those
who have been assaulted, harassed, raped, or abused. This is some of
the strongest shame, and some of the most problematic.

For anyone holding sexual shame,
I invite you to this powerful reality: you are like Mary, the
mother of Jesus.

And I pray there are people like
Elizabeth in your life who will help you reframe what you’ve
experienced and find your own power in your story. So you can find
your joy!

In our society, though, sexual
shame is just one component. It seems to me that there are almost as
many sources of shame as there are ways we categorize each other.
Existing within capitalism, we have a societal narrative that poverty
is shameful. But, truthfully, we also know there is a shame in being
wealthy too – that to gain too much is to take it from others, to
have too much is to refuse to use it to help others. And, somehow,
people in the middle can feel shame BOTH WAYS.

Which is how a lot of things
work. Our society acts as if there is shame in struggling in school,
but also shames those who do too well in school, and it manages to
fall both ways on those in the middle. Or there is a story that
there is shame in different bodies – heights, weights, abilities,
dis-abilities, colors, hair types, noses.

And, let’s also mention the
shame around relationship status, where one might experience shame
for being single, or marrying too quickly, or being divorced, or
remarrying at the wrong time, or having kids or not having kids or
staying home with kids or not staying home with kids or having too
many kids or too few kids or kids the wrong way or at the wrong time.

Our society is ripe with ways to
shame us, to tell us we’re wrong, to make us squirm. It manages to
land on everyone, although not at all equally, and causes untold
damage, most of which is invisible.

I suspect the shame is aimed at
controlling us and getting us to buy things, a population overcome
with its own failures is less likely to notice how it can seek
justice for each other, and is less able to connect and build
relationships that transform lives. And, we’re all a part of it too
– as we are overwhelmed by our sense of shame, we tend to try to
lower the anxiety of it all by naming what we see in other and…
passing it along. Ick.

But, this story of Elizabeth and
Mary is a profound example of the powers that can TRANSFORM shame.
Elizabeth saw Mary’s shame, referenced it, reframed it, and
celebrated Mary instead of shaming her. That’ll change things.

Last week I called us to be like
Elizabeth, wiping way shame to make space for God’s gifts of love
(and this week I’ll add joy.) But one of you, in response, reminded
me that before we can be like Elizabeth wiping away shame, we need to
face our shame like Mary did.

And now, I need to go back and
admit that Elizabeth had her fair share of shame too. At the
beginning of Luke she was a childless woman, which would have been
understood to be a “useless” woman. (Blech.) But something had
happened in Elizabeth where her shame become an opening for
compassion instead of a form of embitterment.

What a beautiful thing that is,
when our wounds, our shame, our struggles can open our hearts, break
open our compassion, make space in us for the struggles and shames of
others. That thing that can happen is a form of grace. It is an act
of God.

It is an act of God that comes
in many forms – sometimes the grace within us starts in awe and
wonder, sometimes from another person offering it to us, sometimes
directly from God, sometimes from the wisdom of a stranger – maybe
through a book or podcast, sometimes even I think it just comes from
within when the strength of our spirit rejects the narrative of our
brokenness.

Even though shame gets passed
around this world, and magnified, SO TOO does grace. I believe that
this is a place where good theology is a source of grace, and thus of
hope, love, and joy. So let me say some things as a person of faith,
a religious leader, a pastor, a person who seeks to follow Jesus’s
ways of knowing God:

God is not ashamed of you.
Shame is not a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to eliminate your shame.
God loves you and even LIKES
you, and has compassion for you.
Grace is a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to show you the power of grace in the world and in your
life.
Your body, your desires, your
gender, your abilities, your lack of abilities, your strength, your
weakness, your relationship status, your work status, your income,
and your resume are NOT what make you worthy or unworthy.
You are INHERENTLY worthy.
You are a beloved child of God.
God wants wonderful things for
you.
God wants wonderful things for
everyone.
You can’t exempt yourself from
God’s desire for goodness for you.

And finally

You aren’t going to shame
yourself into being better.

So, dear ones, to the extent
that it is in your capacity to do so, let go of your shame, and then
let God help you let go of it some more. Let grace in.

Because when you do, you may
find that your song of JOY is even more profound than Mary’s! Thanks
be to God! Amen

December 11, 2022

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

“Love” based on Genesis 17:15-22 and Luke 1:39-45

December 4, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’ve
always loved this little interlude in Luke 1, when Mary goes to visit
Elizabeth. I recognize it to be an early Christian creation, aimed
at connecting John the Baptist and Jesus, while putting them in their
correct order, but there were lots of ways that could have been done
and I appreciate this one.

Now,
I’ve always thought of it as … sweet, nurturing, maternal.
Elizabeth is OLD, a la Sarah, but pregnant, and it is astounding and
wonderful, and it seems Elizabeth has waited a life time for this.
From within the story, it seems likely that Mary was struggling, was
sent away for her pregnancy so people at home wouldn’t know, and was
sent to an older cousin who could be trusted to keep her safe. Maybe
even one known to be a little less judgmental than others. Or
perhaps just one known to be able to feed another mouth. Who knows??

But
I love this idea of this older pregnant woman and this younger
pregnant woman spending months side by side, experiencing new things
in their bodies, developing a deeper trust, maybe even discussing
what God was up to around them. It has ended up being a model for me
of the value of retreat, the value of mentors, the value of
connections with others who can hold me up when I’m vulnerable.

I
love this story.

This
week I learned that I’ve missed the majority of it’s power. I need
to give some context warnings here about violence, murder, and sexual
violence. It is always OK to leave, and stop listening when it isn’t
OK to hear.

Elizabeth
speaks a blessing to Mary, it is particularly familiar to those who
have prayed The Hail Mary, which says:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the
Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of
God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our
death.
Amen.

Elizabeth’s
words are, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb…” (Those are the ones picked up verbatim
in The Hail Mary) “From where does this visit come to me? That the
mother of my sovereign comes to me? Look! As soon as I heard the
sound of your greeting in my ear, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Now blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of
these things spoken to her by the Holy One.”

As
Dr. Wilda Gafney says, “Elizabeth’s greeting comes from scriptures
she well could have known: Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They invite
speculation on her contact with them orally or in writing…
Elizabeth’s proximity to the temple and its liturgies and her own
priestly lineage may have increased the likelihood of her literacy.”¹
So, like you do, I looked up Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They may
not be what you’d expect.

The
Judges passage, in context is:

Most blessed of women be
Jael,
   the wife of Heber the Kenite,
   of
tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him
milk,
   she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.

She put her hand to the
tent-peg
   and her right hand to the workmen’s
mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
   she crushed
his head,
   she shattered and pierced his temple.

He sank, he fell,
   he lay still at her
feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
   where he
sank, there he fell dead.

Judith
13:18 is more similar than you might think, “Then Uzziah said to
her, ’O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all
other women on earth, and blessed by the Lord God, who created
the heavens and the earth, who has guided you to cut off the head of
the leader of our enemies.”

This
is… not as cozy as I was thinking. And, I’m thinking for lots of
you, these are not familiar stories and you might not have any idea
whatsoever is going on with the Bible celebrating murder.

So,
let’s at the very least make ourselves a little bit familiar with
the stories of these women to whom Mary is being compared. First
Jael, from the book of Judges. The book of Judges tells some of the
pre-history of the Ancient Nation of Israel, describing a 400 year
period when the tribes mostly functioned on their own, and when there
were outsider attacks, God raised up leaders – called Judges – to
fight them off and protect the people. One such judge was a woman
named Deborah, and she worked with a general named Barak when an
attack came from the Canaanites led by their general Sisera. Deborah
is called a prophetess as well as a judge, and is presented as
capable and impressive.

Her
general Barak is scared because the Sisera and the Canaanites have
more impressive weapons than they do, so he asks Deborah to come with
him into the battle, believing that God would help keep HER safe and
thus keep him safe. Deborah responds that she’ll go, AND that while
he will “win” the glory will not go to him, but to a woman.

So,
the battle happens, the Israelites win, the Canaanites run away, and
the general is running off on his own trying to save his own life.
He come to the tents of the Kenites, likely a metal working or
artisan tribe with neutrality to both parties, particularly the tent
of Heber the Kenite, who is gone, and Jael the Kenite who is present.
Jael invites him in, makes him comfortable, gives him milk, stands
guard while he goes to sleep, and then drives a tent stake into his
head to kill him. When the General Barak comes after him, Jael shows
Barak Sisera’s body.

And
then Deborah and Barak sing a song of praise for the winning of the
battle and Jael’s part in it – which is where we get our verses
from Judges.

So,
Judith. I suspect you are even less likely to know her story, as the
book of Judith is considered part of the Apocrypha (that is,
Protestants don’t consider it part of the Bible). It is a novel,
written a century or two before Jesus, telling the story of Judith
who saves her village from the Assyrian General Holofernes. It is a
pretty good story, and I’m a little bit sorry to give you spoilers,
but my goal is to explain Elizabeth and Mary, so shrug. The
General was attacking Judith’s home town, and the Jews there had
brokered a 5 day peace plan, but the council was hemming and hawing
about what to do, so Judith took things into her own hands. She does
a lot of praying and asking for God’s help, and she dresses up
beautifully, lies to the army to say she is fleeing to the enemy army
for safety, makes it plain to the General that she is game for
seduction, and then when he seeks to do so, plies him with enough
alcohol that he passes out drunk, beheads him with his own sword,
steals his head, goes off with her maid to pray, and instead of
returning to the war camp, goes back to her village to tell them
she’d solved their problem. The town magistrate then speaks the
words we heard earlier, praising her and naming her as having
followed God’s guidance.

Now,
we need to take this one more step, back to Dr. Gafney for an
explanation of Elizabeth’s words, “Both forerunners of this
greeting are associated with bloody violence: Deborah’s war against
the Canaanites and Jael’s execution of Sisera, and an Assyrian siege
and Judith’s execution of Holofernes. Further, both Judith and Jael
are in sexually scandalous situations: attempted rape and assignation
and seduction. Mary’s own pregnancy is scandalous, hinting at sexual
infidelity. Elizabeth’s words provide transgenerational support and
comfort.”

That
is, if you were wondering why Jael would have murdered Sisera when
her people were at peace with him, the assumption underlying the
story is that he had or would attempt to rape her. Deborah ends up
celebrating that she didn’t end up having to seduce the general, but
is is CLEAR that she was going to do what needed to be done to save
her people.

These
women were fierce, to say the least. They were deadly. And, at the
same time, they were vulnerable. Jael was alone her in tent.
Deborah’s people were all at risk of death, and her actions to save
them put her at great risk – and alone in the general’s tent as
well. These women were praised as being “most blessed of women”
and “you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on
earth.” And they too had scandals. It is as if the scandals don’t
make them less worthy of the praise they received.

It
is as if what happened to Mary need not define her life either. It
is as if whatever the world may be saying about Mary, even if her
life is at risk because of the interpretation of infidelity, she is
being connected to some of the fiercest, most active women in the
Bible in protecting God’s people. It is as if Elizabeth is seeing
her scandal, and giving her a new way to see it. It is as if
Elizabeth’s words wipe away Mary’s shame and give her a new frame of
reference, one that has been repeated millions of times in history,
praising Mary, and her role in God’s plans.

Friends,
in a world that defines people by their scandals, a world that locks
people up for their worst moments (or presumed worst moments), a
world that cuts people of for mistakes, a world that remembers even
misspoken words – let us be Elizabeths. Let us see, and have the
power to reframe the shame people hold. Let us wipe away shame to
make room for love. Let us see the whole person, even the hero, in
the broken one. Let us remember the stories of the HUMANITY of God’s
people in the Bible, and make space for HUMANITY in each other and in
ourselves. Let us be Elizabeths, wiping away shame to make space for
love. Amen

1Wilda
Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
(New York, NY: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), page 7.

December 4, 2022

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

“Hope” based on Genesis 16:7-13 and Luke 1:26-38

November 27, 2022
by Sara Baron

This Advent
starts with annunciations – announcements to two women of what life
they are bringing forth into the world. These are told as God’s
mighty acts, the ways God impacts the world through these women and
their sons. They set up the anticipation of Advent – a knowing of
what is coming, an awareness that it is not here yet, and some rather
significant worries about the journey from here to there.

The
two stories today are united not only by the announcements they
contain, nor the scared young women, nor the extraordinary sons they
will have. In a way we might not have noticed before, the stories
are united by slavery.

Hagar
IS enslaved. Mary’s response to God, once it is translated without
attempting to soften it, is “Here am I, the woman-slave of God;
let it be with me according to your word.”
This response reminds me that Mary was a vulnerable girl, one who was
responding to the STATEMENT (not question or request) from a Powerful
God of what would happen to her.

Does Mary respond, “I have no
power here, so do what you wish”? Or “I am willing?” Would it
matter? The messenger had told her what would be, not asked her if
she was willing. The response that says, “I am a woman-slave of
God” could be humility and respect, or a desire not to be killed
for disagreeing. Mary is written into a no win situation. To say no
to God, when a direct messenger is sent, is known to be a bad idea.
(Yet, many of us do it regularly with only continued nagging to pay
for it… so, there is that.) To agree to a pregnancy while engaged
and not sleeping with one’s fiance is to become eligible for stoning.
It would be proof of adultery.

Mary’s response says she is
God’s slave. Hagar’s life is one of a slave. These are not the same
thing, but the connection between should be unsettling.

Hagar
is enslaved. She is enslaved and endures both physical and sexual
violence. Before our story begins, she runs away into the
wilderness, which means she was deciding to die rather than endure
more. Yet, in the wilderness, by spring of water which meant life
could continue, Hagar had an encounter with the Divine. (She is the
first woman to do so, also the first woman to be told directly she
will bear a child…. one of only three.) She is addressed, by name,
by the Holy Messenger. She is told what will happen.

And,
she is told to return to the violence she had run from. Further,
she is told that the
violence she experiences will become the legacy of the child she
bears, who will struggle against those he will call kin, as well
those who come after him. (This is an ancestor story, where the
ancestors serve as symbols for the people who claim their names.)
Then Hagar NAMES God, which is a HUGE deal, and calls God, “The God
who sees me.” Ishmael’s name mean’s God hears.

These indicate a powerful
blessing experience. These indicate she took hope from this
encounter. She feels seen, and heard. Now, of course, an experience
of the Divine IS a blessing, and would be one that she couldn’t have
expected. EVEN THOUGH she gets sent back to slavery, back to
violence, back to abuse, Hagar calls God, “God who sees me” and
calls her son, “God hears.”

Phew.

I find myself wishing God had
changed things for her, not just sent her back to the same situation
as a slave, experiencing violence. Yet, I cannot dismiss the power
of her experience. It wasn’t perfect, it didn’t end with happily
ever after. Oppression, even, continued. And, for Hagar, there was
hope.

But, hope is sturdier than
perfection. Hope is grounded. Hope is real and faces the world as
it is. Hope doesn’t require fairy tale endings, it means us where we
are.

This is good, because if only
people who know no oppression can have hope, few people could.

Hagar’s story isn’t particularly
unique. Many people have been enslaved in human history, including
to this day. Many people have experienced sexual violence. Many
people have been forced into marriages where sex is expected, but not
truly consented to. I fear that most women in history can identify
with Hagar.

And yet, there has been hope.

Hagar’s pregnancy was
complicated. I think maybe Mary’s was too. And, the Bible says,
their pregnancies changed the world for the better. We needed
Ishmael. We needed Jesus. We needed them raised by their mothers,
who had particular wisdom, particular faith, particular experiences
of the Divine, particular gifts.

This idea of a complicated
pregnancies, ones that threatened the life and well-being of the
mother, ones that changed the course of history, THESE are stories of
Advent.

These are stories of things NOT
being as they should be.

These are stories of waiting for
God to act to make things better.

Hagar felt blessed by her
encounter. A miracle here is that the people who wrote the book
understood themselves to be Issac’s descendants, but they wrote the
story of Ishmael’s mother. And they admitted the wrong done to her.
And they thought of her as blessed. And they perceived in her
experiences of God, EVEN THOUGH they thought of her descendants as
their enemies. That has a sense of the hand of God in the telling of
the stories to me. That’s not generally how we tell the stories, the
way the victor’s narrative reigns.

Whatever Mary’s experience of
her pregnancy was, I still believe that the life and faith of Jesus
were formed by his family, and his mother. And somewhere along the
line I do believe she had profound experiences of God, and was able
to teach them to her son.

Hagar and Mary were people with
limited choices. These women were on the margins, their sons were on
the margins, but their sons ALSO cared for others on the margins and
in doing so changed human history. Even encounters with God didn’t
make everything better. But being HEARD, being SEEN, being CHOSEN,
mattered. It gave them hope. It gave them meaning. It gave them
strength.

And, I believe, it gave their
sons compassion. And I note, as well, the power of being heard,
seen, and loved.

That’s another of those weird
things about real hope. It can take the hard, the horrible, the
ugly, the painful, even the traumatic, and work with it. Real hope
doesn’t require a pristine, hygienic, sterile environment. It meets
us where we are, just like God. And it works from here.

Hagar being enslaved was not OK.
It has never been OK for any human who was enslaved. And, those who
have lived as enslaved people still had hope. They had hope for the
end of slavery. They had hope things wouldn’t always be that way.

Some had hope of escape. Some
had hope of little moments of connection or compassion with others.
Many had hope in God, the one who never stops caring no matter how
hard things get.

And, changes are pretty high the
mother of Jesus didn’t get pregnant after choosing her marital
partner, experiencing desire, and consenting to intercourse. This,
too, is not OK. And, this too happened to many, many, many women.
It continues to happen. It is not OK. But it isn’t the end of hope.

I
am now preaching after the most recent attack on the LGBTQIA+
community in the form of a gunman attacking Club Q in Colorado
Springs. The attack was less deadly than it might have been because
of the actions of a vet and a drag queen, who took down the gunman.
Thank God they stopped him. And yet 5 people are dead, 19 are
injured, and once again the safety and sanctity of the club has been
violated. Trauma abounds. Grief abounds. The sickening reality of
the danger of being queer or trans is affirmed. The still present
horrors from the similar attack on Pulse Nightclub are resurgent.

And I wonder about this sticky,
sturdy, real hope I’m talking about. What does it even look like?
Is this a hope that someday our children will be able to dance in
peace? Is this a hope that maybe one person who might commit
violence like that could receive love in ways that prevent it? Is it
a hope that reasonable gun laws might make these shootings harder
accomplish?

Cause I still want hope to look
perfect. I want it to be that there is NO more violence against
queer and trans people ever again. I want an end to gun violence,
and an end to violence. I want clubs to thump and throb with music,
never again interrupted by gun fire. I want veterans to come home
without PTSD, and not need to position themselves to see exits, and
not be needed to stop shooters. Ok, I want there to be no need for
veterans.

And, I’m struck by both God and
hope being more willing to be in this reality than I am. To know the
brokenness we live in, and not give up. To see how hard things are,
to see how interconnected the struggles are, and not be overcome. To
know the grief, the heartache, the violation, the trauma, and not let
it be the only or the final word.

Our God is a God who sees.

A God who hears.

And a God of hope.

God calls us from this world of
violence into the kindom of peace. God gives us gifts of peace, love, joy, and hope.
God calls us to be peace-makers, love-sharers, joy-spreaders,
hope-increasers. May we receive and act on God’s call. May this
Advent be a time of quiet transformation so that what God is growing
us may soon break forth. Amen

November 27, 2022

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

“Rejoice” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Philippians 4:4-9

November 20, 2022
by Sara Baron

I think gratitude is one of the
most important parts of our spiritual lives. I’ve experienced this,
AND I’ve seen the research, and I love it when both are true.

The challenge is, I’m not sure
what I have to say about gratitude that is new, and I’m rather afraid
of being trite. This tends to be my problem when I encounter
scriptures I rather agree with, rather than ones I can have a good
debate with. But, I’ve found time and time again that a conversation
with scriptures can take me to unexpected places, so let’s see where
they lead today.

We can start with Philippians.
With that lovely repetition to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I
will say, Rejoice.” (4:4) I am always moved by the people I meet
who are living out this commandment. The ones attending to the good
God is doing, and speaking it with joy. The ones focused on joy, and
rejoicing, and celebrating God’s goodness.

I also love the next line,
inviting people to “let your gentleness be known.” That sounds
like the highest of callings, to be known by gentleness. I have
known some people to whom that description would apply, and it is a
gift simply to be in their presence. Their very self-hood changes
the world around them for the better.

But then we get to “don’t
worry, trust God.” And while it is very good advice, it is very
difficult to apply. Especially because the world isn’t fair. But
then again, those who I’ve known who live this are often the ones
with the least amount of worldly goods, who say they trust God
because God has provided. So, maybe I don’t actually know that much
about this, and I simply have a lot to learn.

Then, focus on the good. This
is the one that meets me where I am right now. This is the one
that calls for my attention, my reflection, my sharing. So, here we
are and here we are going to stay. In Paul’s words, “Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if
there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.” (4:8)

Maybe it is because of the work
I do, but it often occurs to me that the resource I spend the most
time managing is my attention. This isn’t just about if I give my
attention to the good stuff or the hard stuff.

The daily questions start with:
Do I respond first to this email, or that one? To email or phone
calls? To texts or facebook messenger? Do I end this conversation
because I have a meeting, or do I make space for this because it is
more important? When do I know I’ve found the right poem, or hymn,
or sermon example and it is time to move on, or maybe it isn’t good
enough yet and I could keep searching. Which book should I read
next? Do I have time to read? Should I go visiting? Which
committee asked me which thing to follow up on? Which one of those
things needs the most immediate response? Which one of those things
will take the most preparation? Is reading the news important so I
know what is going on, or is it a distraction to what is REALLY going
on with God and God’s people? Do all of the staff have what they
need from me to do their jobs well? Is it OK to just sit and be with
God before I try to balance any of these things?

(If you found that list
overwhelming, please note that it applies ONLY to my work life, and
doesn’t even touch on other parts of my life. Also, if you found
that overwhelming, I’d appreciate knowing how you make such
decisions, cause it sounds like you may have wisdom I need.)

That last question about
sitting with God and just being before I try any of the things,
that’s the key one for me. I’ve known since my early twenties
that I’m at my best when I get quiet time with God, but I’ve
struggled to allow myself to have the thing I need when other things
also clamor for my time and attention. Someone recently asked me,
“if I already know what I need in order to be the best pastor and
person I can be, why am I not doing it?” And in the question, I
was thus reminded that connecting with God, and being centered, is
the thing that makes all the rest of what I do valuable, and it is in
EVERYONE’S best interest for me to nurture my connection with the
Holy and to have space to hear my own wisdom (even when the wisdom is
hidden under my fears.)

So, I’ve been doing it. Not
perfectly, but waaaayyyy more. Sometimes I still feel guilty.
Because I could be using my time and attention for so many other
things! But, I’m pushing through the guilt.

And the results have been
interesting. Mostly because my capacity to see the beauty of the
world, the wonder of people, and the mysterious goodness at hand has
changed. Being quiet in the morning (most mornings), softens me. It
slows me down. And it makes things easier. I’m get hurt less
easily. I have empathy closer at hand. I can see details and the
big picture, at the same time, with more ease. I’m just less
overwhelmed.

But the best part is being able
to see wonder again. I’m awed by text messages from people, because
they so often contain wisdom and I’m able to be thankful. The other
day – please don’t judge – I saw a dust particle floating in a
stream of sunshine and it was beautiful, and I had ENTIRELY forgotten
that dust can be awe inspiring and beautiful. I’m a little more
flexible (don’t expect immediate miracles people), which makes
everything flow easier in … well, parenting, and being a partner,
and in being a pastor.

For me, the key to being able to
bring my attention to “whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is
commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything
worthy of praise” isn’t in just trying harder to focus on
the good things. For me, at least, the way to bring my attention to
the good is to attend to what I need to be whole, and then the rest
flows.

Now, some of you are great at
letting yourselves have the things you need. I commend you, and
apologize for this mostly useless sermon as far as you are concerned.
However, for a wide range of reasons (including “capitalism”) a
whole lot of us aren’t great at letting ourselves have what we need.
Sometimes there are external factors that make it hard (or
impossible.) But often, there are internal ones. I can tell you
that I believe God wants you to have your needs met. I can tell you
that if you stop fighting what you need as too much, or too selfish,
or unreasonable, or … whatever you tell yourself… that other
goodness flows from letting yourself get what you need.

Now, I continue to believe I’m
likely not alone in needing quiet time with God, but I also think
that my need is a little different than other people’s. This week I
was given the gift of a GREAT descriptor of this church as a group of
people who love kinetic prayer. That is, many of us around here NEED
to give back. Some people NEED to hear gorgeous music and just feel
the wonder of it in their bodies. Some people NEED to move in nature
or their souls start to shrivel up. Some people NEED connections
with others, regularly. (I think we all do, but more so for
extroverts.) Some people NEED to create. I can’t tell you what you
need, but I suspect you already know.

The key is to let God help you
whittle away at the internal barriers to allowing yourself to
prioritize what you need.

So, a quick hot take on
Deuteronomy. This is the story of God giving the people what they
need. Land to work, food to eat, homes to settle into. And the
people give back to God of what they have. That is, they RECIEVE the
gifts of God, and they give back from what they have RECIEVED.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s
just me, and if so I’m sorry for wasting your time but I’m really
happy for you. That is, maybe I’m the only one still struggling to
receive God’s good gifts, and let myself have what I need. If not
though. If you still struggle too, may this be a moment of
assurance. We have to receive what God gives us before we do
anything else with it. It is hard, TRUST ME I KNOW, but God wants
goodness for you.

Please don’t stand in God’s way.

And when you let God’s good
gifts fill you up, the gratitude comes on its own. And it is
amazing. May you see it too. Amen

November 20, 2022

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

“God’s Responses to Despair” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and…

November 13, 2022
by Sara Baron

The people that walked in darkness have seen a light….
but it is discolored and a little murky.

I think that’s a fair
summary of what the “return” from the exile was actually like.
When Jerusalem was defeated in 587/586 BCE, the city gates were
ripped down, the Temple was destroyed, there was massive death and
destruction, and the remaining leaders, priests, and scribes were
force march to Babylon. The exile. During the time of the exile we
hear emerging stories of great pain and lament, AND prophecies of
great hope in and care of God. The exile and the period right after
it are also the time when the Hebrew Bible started to be written
down.

In 538 BCE those in exile were freed to return home if
they wished. Thank God! And many did, thank God!

And when they came home, it was …. painful.

The Promised Land had been decimated. Those who
remained had been without protection, without resources, without
hope. Many, many had died. I’ve heard as high as 90% of the
population. Those who were alive had now lived in fear and scarcity
for generations. And those who returned weren’t much better off,
except that they’d had hope of return which now turned out to seem to
be misplaced.

I’m going to just throw out here that if we are now in
the “end of the pandemic” it sure doesn’t look like I hoped it
would in March or April of 2020, and I have lots and lots of empathy
for those who “came home from exile” only to find out that home
had changed in the meantime.

In the midst of the struggles of return, and the
conflicts that inevitably emerged between those who’d been left
behind and those who’d been force-ably removed – and even more so
between their children and grandchildren, come the words of our
Hebrew Bible text. In context, Isaiah 65 is still struggling to
answer why things are so bad, and the first part of the chapter
claims that the issue is that people aren’t being faithful to God and
God’s dreams. But this later part of the chapter is focused on the
blessings God has in store for those who do follow the ways of God.
We may like to think of this as the fruits of living out God’s
visions for a just and compassionate society.

And, its pretty great. We’ve talked recently enough
about the part of Jeremiah that urged the exiles to build houses and
live in them, plant gardens and eat from them. This Isaiah passage
reiterates those ideals, but does so BACK AT HOME. Now the command
is not to give up on Jerusalem, but to have hope it can be rebuilt.

I think this might be a good time to remind you that
Jerusalem WAS rebuilt. The Temple was rebuilt. The city walls were
rebuilt. The city gates were rebuilt. The traditions of the people
were rebuilt. The hope in God was rebuilt. It didn’t look the same
as it had before, but it was rebuilt.

In fact, that’s a story we don’t focus on enough, and
I’ve been in initial conversations with people about restarting Bible
Study in January, and I’ve now convinced myself we should read the
book of Ezra, the story of rebuilding Jerusalem. (If you’d like to
study with us, the current question is: what time on Sundays shall we
do it, and I’d LOVE to hear your opinion.)

But now I’m ahead of myself.

In our passage today, we hear of the “new heaven and
new earth” God is preparing. To summarize quickly, I’m turning to
Walter Brueggemann¹:

“Yahweh is moving beyond what is troubling and
unresolved to what is wondrously new and life giving. There is a
steady push towards newness in the Isaiah tradition that intends to
override the despair of Israel, especially the despair of exile.”
246

There are thee facets of new city:

“The first quality of the new city, stated negative
then positively, is a stability and order that guarantees long life.
As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and
brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.” (247)
“There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate
in life as the creator intends.” (248)

“The second facet of the reconstituted city is
economic stability.” Which implies stable society, lack of
invasion, fertility of land, fair taxes, fair laws. “Yahweh will be
the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.” “No
one is threatened, no one is at risk. No one is in jeopardy because
the new city has policies, practice, and protective structures that
guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian
possibility.” (248)

“The third provision…concerns an agenda of
well-being for children in the new city.” (249) “These three
accents on guaranteed long life, economic stability, and life under
blessing all attest to a city in which the power for life given by
the creator is fully available and operates in concrete ways. The
poem is a vision, but it is a vision looking to a public practice.”
(249)

That is, Isaiah 65 is written to COUNTERACT despair with
dreaming. It is a vision of hope, but one that would be worth
perusing. Despite the language of new heaven and new earth, this is a
pretty earth-centric vision. It centers on civic stability, economic
sustainability, and God’s tangible presence among those who are
alive. It starts with peace, includes distribution of goods, and
looks towards the well-being of all.

That seems like it would have landed well among the
people in despair, and changed what was possible for them.

Which has me wondering what God is dreaming of here.
How God is counteracting despair here and now. What sort of vision
God is planting among us for our community, state, nation, world
today?

Because I have noticed that God doesn’t give up when
disaster strikes, God just keeps on working towards goodness. This
also strikes me as the narrative of Luke. I think to hear our Luke
passage well requires remembering that Luke was likely written after
the destruction of the SECOND Temple, which coincided with the
destruction of Jerusalem and a horrifying number of her people. It
was a time of great despair, a moment of transformation in our faith
history and the history of our Jewish siblings in faith, a time when
everything changed and new forms of faith practice had to be created.
The transition from the Temple to the Synagogue happened at that
time, the end of the Sadducees and beginning of the leadership of the
Pharisees, etc. Our tradition was so new I can’t point to the same
types changes, but I can see how seismic this experience was.

The passage we read today was written by the early
Christian community, presumably trying to make sense of the
destruction and trying to reassure each other about what Jesus would
say to them in the midst of it. It is probably true that the Holy
Spirit helped them find these words of comfort, but it is probably
ALSO true that Jesus didn’t say this stuff in his life time.

The early Christian imagination produced the hope it
needed to face its reality without shattering into despair.

Which is to say that both of our passages are written to
people in despair, to try to keep them together and focused on hope.
They just sound really different.

Maybe that’s because people need different things at
different times.

Maybe it is because the despair they faced was
different.

Or because the perceived opponent acted differently.

Or the community was struggling in different ways.

But truly there are different ways to respond to despair
with hope, and the Bible is full of them, and we have two solid
examples before us today.

And, I heard a third recently. Bishop Karen Oliveto
shared a quote that I keep thinking about, “I rarely feel such
clear signs of fatigue and anxiety on days that are filled with
travel, meetings and assignments—only when I stop to rest. Without
sabbath, I would be dangerously ignorant of the true condition of my
soul.” ― Andy Crouch

I think in the midst of the struggles I hear today, this
is the one that could make the fastest difference. Right now we have
a lack of sabbath, lack of rest, lack of spaciousness for joy – and
lack of time to face despair. But this is change-able. We can
prioritize sabbath. We can make space for rest. We can sort through
despair instead of running from it. We can make space for joy and
not just distractions. We can even make space for relationships and
not just be ships passing in the night.

Over the past almost 3 years we’ve been exiled. I can’t
tell if we’ve really returned, but if we have, it is still hard.
We’ve seen a lot of destruction and more than our fair share of
death. But based on the Bible we can be sure that God is speaking a
word of hope and a depth of vision into this moment.

Maybe this seems too simple, but I think it is abundant:
take time OFF. Be spacious with your soul. Let your to-do lists
go. Follow what brings you joy. Let your emotions BE, without
judgment. Let God have time to dream in you.

Because as Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may linger for the
night, but joy comes with the morning.” God isn’t done with us,
not yet. May God’s dreams be met with our spaciousness to hear them!
Amen

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

November 13, 2022

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

“Passing Faith Down Generations” based on Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21…

November 6, 2022
by Sara Baron

“One
generation shall laud your works to another and shall declare your
mighty acts.” So says the Psalm, so say our lives. When I have
had the opportunity to ask people about their lives of faith, they
are NEVER solo journeys. Many stories talk about a parent or
grandparent who was a faithful person, and brought a young child
along to church. Many others talk about a loving person found in
adulthood, and inviting them along. Every person I’ve talked to
shares about experiences of love and affirmation in the church they
found, and the people they looked up to, and the joy they found among
the saints. People don’t come to church JUST because they love God.
Loving God happens everywhere. People are part of the Body of Christ
because other people in the Body of Christ have shown them the love
of God and how it can transform a life.

“One
generation shall laud your works to another and shall declare your
mighty acts.” When you think about those people in your life, the
ones who taught you not only that God is good but also that the
community of faith is able to teach you about love and good living,
joy and the delight of service – HOW did they teach you?

Around
here, I think, the teaching is often indirect. Or perhaps I should
say embodied. It sounds more like, “I love sharing love this way,
wanna come” then “let me tell you the story of how God has acted
in my life.” Inviting people along is GREAT. Also, I often think
we probably should share those stories of God-moments too though. I
think we have them, but God-stories are pretty tender, and not always
terribly coherent, and don’t always translate well to words, and more
often than not they’re a little weird. Because God doesn’t tend to
adhere to cultural norms of acceptable behavior. And we don’t always
want to trust just anyone with experiences like that.

(It
starts to become clear how it is that so many Bible stories are
written in metaphor, because experiences of God just don’t
communicate well any other way.)

But
I wonder if some of the saints we remember today DID trust us with
their stories. Maybe those stories are worth passing down. And I
wonder what would happen if we shared with each other our stories. I
suspect we’d be doing even a little better with the description “One
generation shall laud your works to another and shall declare your
mighty acts.”

Now
that I’ve made you squirm a bit – reminding you to share your
stories of God-moments and also passing on the ones you’ve heard, I’m
going to go to Ephesians are look at the other way of doing it. The
one we are better at around here, which is also the way faith has
been transferred around here most often. As he often does, Paul
writes to the Ephesians and starts by thanking them for their faith.
The starts of his letters are always filled with gratitude, this one
is quite lovely, “ I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and
your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease
to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”

Our
faith in God, our following of Jesus, is expressed in how we share
our love with others. Paul is happy to hear they are filled with
love, and says that means he can see their faith.

There
is some nuance here that I struggle with a little. Paul says he
hears of their love “towards all the saints” and there is no
question in the context of Ephesians that “all the saints” means
the believers of Jesus. That is, the early church. That is, NOT
everyone. Just the insiders.

In
first century context, this makes sense. The church was small, weak,
and under attack. Supporting each other had to come first to
survive, and fairly radical sharing of resources within the followers
of Christ was normal. The church modeled the kindom of God, but on a
small scale.

The
church was not yet a part of the power structure of society, nor the
status quo. There weren’t clergy, and they didn’t have special
privileges or tax benefits. No one had a non-profit designation.

So,
I guess it makes sense that the love was first for the followers of
Christ. It is also true that many, many, MANY of the followers of
Christ were the people struggling most in the world. So by offering
care to insiders, God’s vulnerable were being cared for.

I
struggle to bring this into the 21^st century because it is
such a deep both/and, and it requires nuance and care. I think we
still need to share love with each other, and I am willing to say we
have to do that FIRST. Because unless we ground each other in God’s
love, we stand on shaky ground. Because unless we ground each other
in God’s love, we miss out on the shared gifts of the whole. Because
unless we ground each other in love, we aren’t sharing God.

AND,
at exactly the same time, the love has to extend beyond “the
communion of saints” beyond the walls of the church, beyond the
faith community. Because NOW we are a known part of society, now we
have members with power and authority in the world, now we have
privilege and respect, and we need to use it to care for God’s
beloveds, especially those who are vulnerable.

I’ve
been oddly excited about the new program structure we’re putting into
place in January, because it actually does this. In addition to the
Worship Committee – which aims to help people connect with God in
community, and the Intersectional Justice committee – which aims to
help people advocate for the vulnerable and understand the ways the
world works so better advocacy can happen – we’re adding TWO new
committees that I think balance them out. Spiritual Formation aims
to help people connect with the Divine as individuals. And Nurturing
Relationships aims to help people connect with each other. That is,
to increase the love between the saints. AND to help us experience
God and tell those stories. It is almost as if it is both parts of
the scriptures we’re playing with today.

We
are trusted with the stories of the Saints who came before us, to
hold in our hearts, and to share when we can. We are trusted with
the faith of the Saints who came before us, to pass it on to the next
generations. We are trusted with the love of the Saints who came
before us, to share it in the church and in the world. We are
trusted with the resources of the Saints who came before us, to
combine with our own resources to use them to build the kindom of
God.

What
legacies we have from those who came before us. May God help us to
pass along what we hold to those who will come after us. Amen

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

November 6, 2022

“Joy and Protest” based on Psalm 98:1-6, Isaiah 55:10-13

October 30, 2022
by Sara Baron

“You shall go out with joy, and be
led forth with peace, the mountains and the hills will break forth
before you, there will be shouts of joy, and all the tress of the
field shall clap (shall clap) their hands.” So goes our final hymn
today, and so has gone our stewardship campaign this year.

Isaiah 55 for the win.

Joy!

Peace!

Imaginatively imagery of pure delight!

So, I went to Walter Brueggemann to
understand better what is going on, and the great Prophetic Scholar
did not disappoint. He reminded me that Isaiah 40, the start of
second Isaiah, begins with
the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem.” The entirety of the passage is written to
the exiles, with affirmation that God is not done with them yet.

That while the worst has come, it will
not be their whole story. That when things get hard, God still wins.
That God’s love remained with them, and hope continued.

Our passage today is the very last part
of what scholars call 2^nd Isaiah – this part of the book
written to the exiles to PREPARE them for God’s work of restoration.
And today’s passage imagines the joy of their homecoming. The
passage ties together some of the work of the exodus with the work of
restoration. The rain and snow that can be counted on to produce
crops remind the people of the desert wandering, and God’s
provisions. The verb even “go out” is a verb of the exodus. But
here, in the “2^nd exodus” it is quite different. The
first exodus was hasty and fearful. But the restoration, this “new
exodus” is joy, peace, and well-being.

Bruggemann writes, “Before there can
be any geographical departure from the [Bablyonian] empire, there
must be a liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure. Israel
in exile must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out
beyond Babylon’s administration. Israel must so trust the rhetoric
of assurance and victory that it can flex its muscles of faith and
sense that the cadences of faith are more compelling than the slogans
of the empire.”¹

And, this is that imaginative
departure. It imagines creatures and … well, mountains and hills
and trees gathered on the roadside to watch the spectacle of the
people returning. As if it is a parade and nature itself is
healed by the
restoration of the people to their homeland.

Instead of thorn and brier – symbols
of judgment and punishment – there are cypress and myrtle – signs
of growth and life and beauty. The restoration of ancient Israel is
envisioned to be the restoration of sustainable living, of the fair
distribution of goods, the return of the ban on interest, the care
for the vulnerable. And that means the restoration of God’s values,
which was very significant for people who had been living in the seat
of power of a large empire because empires ALWAYS involve domination,
hierarchies, debt, and oppression of the vulnerable. Brueggeman
suggests even creation itself would be healed by this restoration
because empire destroys nature, but sustainable equitable living
exists in harmony with nature.

If it takes dreaming of leaving the
exile in order to prepare the people to actually leave the exile,
this is some excellent writing getting them ready. This is writing
for life. This is writing to remind us that life is possible, that
loveliness exists, that hope is reasonable. As Brueggemann says, in
this writing, “All are now at home, safe, beloved, free, free at
last, Thank God Almighty, free at last.”

As rain and snow leave the sky, to
bring life on earth, and grow food so too is it with God’s word that
accomplishes what it aims at – and it aims at joy, peace, and
restoration.

In order to be ready to leave the
empire, to leave the exile, to return, to be restored, the people
needed first to dream God’s dreams. And God sent them dreams.

Before they could leave in fact, they
had work of letting go – I love his phrasing, “there must be a
liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure. Israel in exile
must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out beyond
Babylon’s administration.”

I preached a few weeks ago about how
ready I am to NOT resonate with exile literature, and that does mean
that I’m pretty excited to hear “end of the exile, beginning of the
return literature.” But I keep noticing that leaving the exile
meant not only leaving the exile but ALSO leaving behind the
pre-exile-ancient-Israel.

Which is to say, I’m all for starting
to vision a post-pandemic life, but I have to keep reminding myself
that to leave the pandemic behind also means finishing the work of
letting go of the pre-pandemic life. It means seeing with clarity
what has changed, and not FIGHTING it anymore. It means accepting
this reality as it is, so that God can dream with me and with us HERE
AND NOW without my too-tight-grip on the past keeping me from
listening.

And, to be honest to these passages, it
also means making more space for joy.

Loosening my grip on what was helps me
make space for joy. Even, loosening my grip on what joy USED TO look
like makes space for how it looks now. And generally speaking,
loosening my grip helps with joy 😉

The thing I’ve noticed about joy, the
continuity of it, is that for me is about connection. I find joy in
connecting with others, in connecting with God, in connecting with
nature. That is, joy happens in togetherness – at least for me.

Which is probably why I’ve been so
moved by our stewardship campaign this year, “Together for joy.”
I simply adore the order of the words. For me, I know joy comes in
togetherness, but I love the INTENTION in being together FOR joy.

It is another wonderful take on the
Psalm:

Make a joyful
noise to the Lord, all the earth;
   break forth
into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with
the lyre,
   with the lyre and the sound of melody.

With trumpets and the sound of the horn
   make
a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

The normal take is the wonder of making
music to praise God, but I love adding to that meaning by seeing each
of our lives as a piece of the music and our lives together as
creating that joyful noise!

In many churches, today is Reformation
Sunday, the day when they remember the initial act of Martin Luther
in nailing the 95 thesis on the church door and starting the
Reformation. We are, curiously enough, a part of Protestantism, but
direct descendants of the Reformation. Lutheran, Presbyterian,
Reformed, and even most Baptist churches descend from the
Reformation, but we split off of the Church of England, which itself
split from the Roman Catholic Church for rather different reasons.
(The king wanted a divorce, the pope didn’t grant one, so the king
nationalized the church.)

Our roots are not in the reformation,
but our identity is in Protestantism. That is, by nature, we PROTEST
the abuses of the church and the world and advocate for God’s people.
Thanks be to God! We are active in the face of injustice, and we are
actively seeking God’s kindom (although, to be fair, this is true of
more people than protestants, so we claim this but not exclusively.)

We are, together for justice, together
for joy, together for compassion. We witness the mountains and the
hills breaking forth before us, and the trees of the field clapping
their hands.

Dear ones, God leads us TO joy. God
leads us to PEACE. Not just for ourselves, for all people, but for
ourselves too. We are blessed with the joy of being together, and we
are together for joy. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p 162.

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

October 30, 2022

“Pride vs. Humility?” based on Psalm 84:1-7 and Luke…

October 23, 2022
by Sara Baron

My
favorite seminary class was “Prayer in the Christian Tradition”
and it was kind like a lab class for prayer. We prayed a lot, in a
lot of different ways, and then we reflected on it. We read books
about what other people thought of as prayer, and we discussed it,
and then we tried it, and we reflected on it, and then we discussed
it again. We learned about prayer types, and we had time to assess
which prayer types we tended towards and which ones… well, drove us
nuts.

Most
of the prayer in that class would have qualified as “contemplative
prayer”, in that it sought to be a means of opening ourselves to
God. Generally speaking I think of contemplative prayer as being a
separate category from “petitionary prayer” where the goal is to
ask God for things, although I admit to that being overly simplified.

So,
anyway, one day in my prayer class we’re given the assignment to pray
“The Jesus Prayer.” We were supposed to do it for a while, maybe
30 minutes or an hour or something, and the professor suggested that
we actually pray it “as is” for a while before changing it. So
we got the experience of praying it as it was, and then got to see
how we would change it and how that would feel. Now, the Jesus
prayer is, “Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This is not exactly my God
language. Had the assignment not been clear (and the professor not
had my respect) I would have changed it immediately. But, I gave it
a try. And that day at least, it was a moving thing to pray.

It made space in me for
different things to emerge than in the prayers I tend towards. It
made space in me for different things to emerge than in the language
I would usually adapt towards.

This week, I was given the gift
of praying the Rosary with someone for whom it is a favorite prayer
practice. Much of the Rosary is – also – not my preferred
language for God. (Although some of it is amazing!)

In
both cases, the repetition made meditative space within me for some
insights that otherwise wouldn’t have had a way to be heard. Which
is one of the great gifts of contemplative prayer, and why I love it
so much.

Now, I can’t hear the Gospel
lesson and the tax collector’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a
sinner!” without thinking of how it got adapted by tradition into
the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me, a sinner,” and how (eventually) freeing it was to have a
sense of mercy and forgiveness for things I was usually trying to
forget I felt guilty about.

The Gospel lesson is inverting
expectations. Normally, the Pharisee would be seen as the one doing
things correctly, Pharisees were famous for their meticulous
commitment to following God’s commandments, and the Pharisee’s prayer
indicates he goes above and beyond even the requirements. Meanwhile,
many people thought very poorly of tax collectors, and they were
rarely the heroes in any stories.

The Gospel praises the tax
collector, for the humility of his prayer while throwing shade at the
Pharisee for his – which is rough since the prayer the Pharisee
prayed was a pretty well known prayer at the time and he wasn’t the
only one doing it.

Now, the Pharisee’s prayer does
strike my ears as arrogant, but I wonder if nuance could help it.
What if instead of “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” he said,
“God, I thank you for what I am able to do, and for your help in
making it possible. I thank you for the temptations I don’t have. I
thank you for the ways I’ve learned that spiritual practice helps me,
and the capacity to do it. I thank you for growing in me a
willingness and capacity to give back.” And, I mean, I’d like to
add, “I open myself to what you want to do next.”

And then I want to ask Jesus if
that prayer is OK. Because I’m not really sure.

I
have been driving by another faith community that has on their sign a
condemnation of self-sufficiency which reads, “You sufficiency is
God’s.” Now, I think self-sufficiency is a horrid myth that does
great damage and I very much hope that they’re trying to encourage
people towards connections with the Divine. But I fear that they may
be making the same error that I hear in the Pharisee.

Because I think there is a
temptation in the phrase, “God is your sufficiency” to believe
that what you have in life is a gift from God. But, the logical
corollary of that position is to believe that what others do NOT have
is a lack of a gift from God. Thus God chooses who has enough to eat
and who does not, who has safe housing and who does not, who
struggles throughout life from childhood trauma and who does not.
And, it entrenches capitalism as God’s will – that if one is doing
OK that is because of God, if one is not doing OK that is because of
God, and thus no one is responsible for creating a system where
everyone is doing OK as a form of justice and righteousness.

(end rant)

I think though, that there has
to space in prayer for utter truth between us and God. And
sometimes, I think we can look at another beloved of God who is
struggling and wish for their struggles to be lessened, and be
thankful that we don’t share that struggle. That might sound like,
“God, I see how horrid it is to live with and fight with addiction,
and I am grateful not to have that challenge.” Or maybe, “Holy
One, my dear friends are divorcing and their hearts ache, and I’m
feeling a little bit guilty even for the love I have in my life, but
I’m thankful for it anyway.”

What
I hear in the Pharisee’s prayer is a dismissal of other people, their
lives, their temptations, their struggles, the external factors
facing them. Scholars tell me that while all tax collectors get
dissed in the Bible and other ancient literature, many of them took
the positions because no other options were open to them, many of
them were honest, and most of them who were dishonest didn’t even
reap the gain from it – their bosses did. The Pharisee’s prayer
dismissed everything about the tax collector except his job, and
didn’t make space for his humanity, needs, or decision making
process.

I don’t know what Jesus (or
maybe Luke, I think signs point to this one being by Luke) was
offended by in the Pharisee’s prayer, but that’s the struggle I hear.

And, it leads me wondering about
what we can be proud of. Years ago now I did a Celebration of Life
service for a church member who had lived through plenty of struggles
in his life. Yet, I was told, he held each of his accomplishments
dear – each certificate of completion, each acknowledgement of
merit, each authorization to try something new. He had a folder in
his backpack that he always carried with him, and in it he kept the
records of his accomplishments. I was delighted by this detail of
his life. I was thrilled that he took what he was able to do
seriously, and made it so that no one could take away from him what
he worked hard to accomplish.

Meanwhile my diplomas and
ordination certificate, et al, sit in a pile in our attic because it
feels pretentious to display them. This isn’t the only story in the
Bible that urges humility, and celebrates the one who comes to God
and the faith community without pride. It is a pretty constant
theme. The urging not to be like this Pharisee is deep seated in our
faith tradition, enough so it can be hard to figure out how to claim
with joy what God is doing in our lives without appearing to brag.

What can we be proud of? What
are we allowed to celebrate? Are we stuck only coming to God with
that Jesus prayer? (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me, a sinner.”)

Heavens I hope not! It is a
viable PIECE of a full prayer life, but it isn’t complete. I think
when we silence what is good in our lives, we also end up silencing
God. In fact, I fear it is easier to focus on sin (individual or
communal) than it is to focus on goodness. And sometimes the urgings
away from pride and towards humility can encourage this.

So,
case in point. In the next few weeks, there are going to be
elections of Bishops in the United States portion of the United
Methodist Church. Some people, God love them, are gifted for
administration and willing to take on the pressure and challenge of
attempting to steer a sinking ship. But conventional wisdom says
that no one who wants to be a Bishop should become one, and those who
wouldn’t ever want the job are the ones who would be best at it. The
ASSUMPTION is that if one admits one’s gifts for administration and
one’s willingness to do truly horrid work, one disqualifies oneself
by lack of humility. (I would note that women and people of color
pay a higher price for not being “humble” than white men do.)

This seems to fit how many of us
think about politicians as well: that those seeking power shouldn’t
be trusted with it (in case the elections of UMC Bishops seemed too
boring for you, which is fair.)

If we are pushing ourselves into
humility at all costs, we are missing the chance to pay attention to
the gifts we have and how we might use them. If, say, a person with
a truly brilliant financial brain thinks of themselves as “below
average with numbers” they might not pay attention when there is a
need for… say…. a church treasurer. (HINT HINT THIS IS NOT
SUBTLE).

Perhaps it will seem ironic to
some of you, I think it does to me, but one of the great gifts of
contemplative prayer for me is the chance to see myself more clearly.
I bring to prayer all the angst, guilt, worry, horror, and fears I
have of how I have erred, failed, and disappointed myself and the
Divine, and then God helps me sort through them. And, while I am
always afraid of God’s judgement, it has turned out pretty much every
time that my judgement is harsher than God’s who tends to reply, “oh
honey, maybe try out a little compassion on yourself too.” The
prayer time helps me see myself and others with compassion, which I
think is related to seeing myself and others more clearly. And
having a clear sense of self involves knowing both strengths and
weaknesses, and admitting them despite the Pharisee.

Or, to share this in a far more
memorable way, this is the poem “God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin
Haught:

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Dear ones, Yes, Yes, Yes! Amen

October 23, 2022

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