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May 26, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Starting With Care” based on Genesis 2:1-3 and Matthew 6:26-34

We’re going to start with the bad news: you can’t control anything.

Or, at least you can’t control anything important.

You can’t control how long you’ll live, what the quality of that living will be, what illnesses or injuries you will endure, how long your loved ones will live, if or when traumatic events will occur, nor how they’ll be responded to.

I was recently a part of a conversation about suffering led by a medical professional who – rather appropriately I thought – was worried about the fact that patients sometimes assume their suffering is God’s punishment. I agreed with him that this is just not TRUE, and it is awful to think that you are both in pain and that you deserve it. But, I am also aware that if pain and suffering aren’t a punishment from God, another option is that life is a crapshoot and there isn’t any meaning to be found in it – and for a whole lot of people that’s MORE uncomfortable than thinking God wills it. Because if God’s punishing them, or teaching them a lesson, then the suffering AT LEAST means something and maybe even has redemptive value. But if it was just a random thing, and it could have happened to anyone and just happened to happen to them – well, for a lot of people that’s WORSE.

Because then it is entirely out of their control. If God is punishing them, then IF ONLY they’d acted differently, then they could have prevented this from happening.

Right? It is an awful theology, but the human desire to pretend we have control is really quite powerful.

And, let’s be honest, we can’t control things but we can …. impact probabilities, right? Cancer is MORE likely if you smoke, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t eat well. Even better, you aren’t likely to get hurt falling off a rock wall if you don’t attempt to climb a rock wall. Right?

That said, once I broke a toe because a container of chili fell out of my freezer and landed on it. No rockwalls involved. Another time I sprained an ankle horribly – at the ski mountain – on the INDOOR stairs when I was grabbing lunch. Probabilities aren’t guarantees.

I find some comfort in the Matthew passage that tells us that worrying and trying to control the uncontrollable is in human nature. This one isn’t a modern day problem and we don’t have to blame the 24 hour news cycle, smartphones, or social media. This is a human problem. We are aware enough of the uncertainties of life to worry about what may happen.

Jesus seems to recommend not worrying about the little things – about eating and drinking and finding clothes. Which, funnily enough, were exactly things that most of his audience was worried about most of the time because he was speaking to people who often didn’t enough enough food, or drink, or a change of clothes.

In the face of their daily struggle for survival, Jesus says,

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

And I get his point. Life is vivacious, nature takes care of itself, hoarding is unnecessary, and truly no one is as beautiful as a flower. But also, I don’t get his point. Because it sounds a whole lot like saying, “Sure, there is a system of oppression out there that took away your family’s land and livelihood, and now you are hoping every day to get hired back to work the land so that you can afford to eat tonight, and sure you are likely to die soon of malnutrition, but don’t worry about it, God will take care of you.” And, while I TRULY believe that God does want to take care of everyone… well, deaths from malnutrition HAPPEN so it seems like that “promise” isn’t one that often works out.

Compassionate people don’t say to starving people, “don’t worry about food.”

So, what the heck is Jesus doing?

I think I did a bad job in picking this passage, particularly that I didn’t look at the verses PRECEEDING these ones. Namely, “No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” These lines are a big deal in the Bible. For a world in which people thought being wealthy was a sign of God’s favor, it really turns the tables. This passage encourages the poor while challenging the wealthy. And it is placed before the bit about the lilies of the field.

And I wonder if Jesus is at this point talking to wealthy people. The ones who DO have enough to eat, but are worried about it anyway. The ones who do have clothes, but fret that they’re not enough.

And I wonder, too, if Jesus is doing one of those really deep teaching things where he is saying to the poor – if you work together you’ll have enough, but when you have enough don’t worry about getting more like the rich people do. Trust in each other and God, don’t horde.

Furthermore, I think maybe Jesus wants those who are oppressed to look up long enough to see they system that is oppressing them, and that it isn’t God’s will. God made a world of abundance, PEOPLE are keeping each other from accessing it. Part of the problem of trying to survive is that you can be so pre-occupied with it that you don’t notice you shouldn’t have to fight that hard.

God made enough. It was true then, and it is true now, just as it is true that people died of not having enough then and people die of not having enough now. God made enough, people have distribution problems. And I think it’s OK to worry about the distribution problems.

I really appreciated this week’s essay from We Cry Justice. I’d like to read a little more of it to you:

God creates human partnerships. In short, God created a system whereby all material and emotional life is tended to. So if we are to be fruitful and multiply – if we are to add to creation – the systems we create must extend the provision of care.

…

Within us lies the potential to create and re-create a system that revolves around and produces care, a system where needs are met. We will need each other to do so. We will need to be in partnership, working together to be fruitful and multiply.1

We can’t CONTROL anything, although we can do a lot of damage trying. We can, however, be in partnership with each other and God and seek to “extend the provision of care.” We can choose to notice that care is inherent in creation, and that God’s care hasn’t changed. We can remind ourselves that there is ENOUGH, and that’s good. We can remember the lilies of the field – when they’re useful – that creation is beautiful and awe-inspiring.

(Image of mutual care: Ellis Nurses with supporters picketing for better care for their patients, and for each other. Photo by Sara Baron)

We can remember that things aren’t now as they should be, but they CAN get better, that God is working with us to make them better, that we’re working together, that many people are in this together. That we want a world where no one has to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear, because the resources of the world are abundant there is enough for everyone – and in the kindom of God the resources are shared with the abundance of God.

It is a dream worth holding onto, and remembering, and seeking. We can start with care. And every little bit helps. We can’t control it, but we can shape it. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Solita Alexander Riley “In the Beginning, There Was Care” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 145.

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

May 26, 2024

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Untitled

February 4, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Yet Always Rejoicing” based on Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 2 Corinthians 6:1-10

This church has been described a church who loves to learn. Its true. We love knowledge around here. We love learning things. We especially love learning things that help us know how to build the kindom of God, but I think it is fair to say that most of us also believe knowing more will help in the long run, so we’ll take learning for its own sake too.

We like knowing how things are. We like knowing how things could be. We like knowing how to get from here to there.

I am not an exception to this, I fit right in. Maybe I’m a little MORESO than average. And the desire to learn, and to know, and to consider are things I love about this church.

It also relates to some of our shared frustrations. Because we also want the world to value learning and knowledge, and to use knowledge for good, and generally to make things better, but we look around and that doesn’t seem to happen. (Or at least not fast enough.) Worse, we look around and the values we share: love, justice, compassion, inclusion, and humility are also not shared in the world.

We look around and things are a mess and we lose hope. And I’m going to play with hope and faith for Lent, so hold on to that for a few weeks. But for now, I think maybe we need a reminder that we may love to learn, and we may be invested in building the kindom of God, but at exactly the same time, we are not God. And God is going to work for good no matter what – with us, through us, despite us, no matter what. If we know something useful, great! If we don’t, God will find a way. If we find great partners, awesome. If not, God will find a way.

We end up being taught by the world that there isn’t enough. Right? There aren’t enough good jobs, so some people some people get ones that don’t pay enough. There isn’t enough good housing, so some people don’t get it. There isn’t enough… you name it and some people get the thing and some people don’t.

But that’s the way our society works, not the way God works. With God there is enough. There is enough love, everyone is loved. There is enough food, enough for everyone to be fed well. There is enough hope, enough to get us through. And, funny enough, there is enough MONEY for everyone to actually do OK. But the ways the world deals with debt and interest gets in the way.

Shifting from the world’s scarcity model to God’s abundance model is a hard thing to do! It takes constant awareness. It takes leaps of faith. It takes a community holding the truth of abundance together. And it takes God’s willingness to give us strength and knowledge to keep moving towards the narrative of abundance.

One important piece of the narrative of abundance for me these days is the reminder that there are enough people working for the kindom, that I can trust God working through all of us and only be responsible for my little contributions. I’ve been thinking about Jesus saying “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It sounds a bit like “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. “ from our Pauline reading today.

God’s abundance is there – including the abundance of rest and joy!!

So, I’m all for us continuing to be people who love to learn. We’re good at it, it is needed, and it helps us work with God. And I’m for us continuing to listen to God’s dreams, because they are amazing and because they inoculate us against the myths of scarcity. I’m for our work of justice and advocacy and our actions of compassion because they all build the kindom of God.

Part of our job, too, is to trust that if we do our part, God works with others to do theirs, and change happens. God plants seeds that can take years, decades, centuries to grow, but boy oh boy when they do! So let’s make sure we are nurturing God’s seeds in us and in our community, and hold on to the knowledge that with the God of abundance, all things are possible. Amen

Sermons

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

October 1, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

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

October 1, 2017

Sermons

“My Delight Is in Her” based on Isaiah 62:1-5 and…

January 17, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This strange story, unique to the Gospel of John, is traditionally connected with the Epiphany. It is only relatively recently that it got pushed out the second Sunday after the Epiphany, and is now only included every three years. I’m grateful that this is not a text that comes up every year. It is a story that leads to a whole lot more questions than answers.

Perhaps you didn’t come up with that many questions. Allow me to share with you some of the questions I have about this strange story:

Why were the disciples invited to this wedding? They’ve been “the disciples” for 1-2 days.
Why did Mary ignore Jesus’s rejection of her request?
Why did Jesus do what he tells his mother he won’t do?
Why was Mary sticking her nose into this wine issue anyway?
Who was getting married?
Why did they have 6 ritual cleansing pots at their house? Why were they empty?
How did they fill the pots? Was it from a well? How far away was it and how long did it take?
We know that people drank wine instead of water because of disease at that time, was “really good wine” watered down to 30% potency like the rest of it?

But more so than any of these, the big question is:

WHY ON EARTH IS THIS PRESENTED AS THE FIRST MIRACLE IN JOHN?

Some commentators do some beautiful work trying to justify this story. Before we even get started on that, let me articulate my biggest issue with preaching about “The First Miracle”: addictions exist, they’re real, and alcoholism is a big deal. It is hard to talk about this passage without waxing poetic about “good wine” and yet it is hard to wax poetic about “good wine” while being truly pastoral to people struck with the disease of alcoholism.

I think that is very important to remember that without water purification technology, in settled communities in the ancient world, no one drank water. People drank wine because the fermentation killed the bacteria that would otherwise kill them – although they didn’t know that. They just knew that they died from water and not from wine. Furthermore, people seemed to enjoy drinking. It shows up early and often in the Bible, and there isn’t condemnation of it. That’s cool, and sometimes fun, for those who don’t have drinking problems. Its hard for those who do. Perhaps it is useful to remember that just as the ancient people didn’t know about bacteria, they didn’t know about alcoholism. Therefore, the Bible seems to assume that wine is equally good for everyone. We know it isn’t.

OK, so now that we acknowledged all that, one commentator that I read this week talked about how great it is that Jesus’s first miracle was for the sake of joy and fun. He wrote, “Sometimes the church has forgotten that our Lord once attended a wedding feast and said yes to gladness and joy.”¹ He continued on describing “a God who loves to hear the laugher of people.”² I like this take on the miracle. I think it has some validity. I’ve been around lots of churches, and church people, who take the entire enterprise way too seriously. The whole idea of connecting to a God of love, and communing with God’s beloved people is that it is supposed to be awesome. There is goodness in God, in worship, in prayer, in study, in sharing God’s love in the world. It is FUN. If you don’t believe me, stay for communion. Communities that don’t enjoy each other and have fun are missing something really important about life with God. This isn’t a competition about who can sacrifice the most. This is about sharing and enjoying life! The presentation of Jesus as someone who cared enough about parties to make sure that they kept having the wine flowing surely does remind us that life with God is GOOD.

There are many reasons to believe that Jesus was a bit of a party-boy. There are lots of passages in the Bible that suggest that God wants us to live life, and live it abundantly, and ENJOY the time we have on this beautiful planet. However, they live in completion with the reminder that we’re supposed to enjoy life AND make sure that others get to as well.

This story, taken seriously, challenges us to receive and then share this extravagant generosity and grace. If we consider God to be interested in people enjoying each other at good parties, it follows that understand a God who really cares about the joy of life. Then we get to wonder about how well we’re receiving it: God who is generous and loving and wants us to enjoy the gift of life offers us opportunities for love, connection, play, and laughter. Sometimes we’re “too busy” or “too serious” to take them. We might want to rethink priorities! Furthermore, this is a great set up to consider the Genesis line “blessed to be a blessing.” How can we follow the example of Jesus in offering extravagant generosity and opportunities for great joy to others? When are we giving things to others for the pure joy of watching their disbelief? This angle on the story is productive and interesting, but it doesn’t really explain why this story comes FIRST.

Many have suggested that this is a post-Easter perspective of Jesus. That’s viable, since John was the last of the gospels to be written, this story only shows up in John, and it has the capacity to be understood has highly metaphorical. John is into poetry. So, if John were working with a story to try to explain Jesus, this could sound like something he might create. From that perspective, we would do well to take note that there are two highly visible, detailed miracles in John. One is this one, and the other is the feeding of the 5000. That one is pretty excessive as well. If the two most visible miracles about about WINE and BREAD, it might be reasonable to assume that there is an intentional theme of Communion underlying them.

Jesus provides wine in radical abundance. Jesus feeds all who come to him. Yeah. That works. It still doesn’t explain why this story comes FIRST, in fact, it would work better right after the feeding, right??

This week my reading pointed me to two verses in the minor prophet section of the Hebrew Bible. The verses are Amos 9:13 and Joel 3:18 and they read:

The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who ploughs shall overtake the one who reaps,
and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13)

On that day
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk,
and all the stream beds of Judah
shall flow with water;
a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord
and water the Wadi Shittim. (Joel 3:18)

That is, in the Hebrew Bible, “an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age.”³ I suspect that THIS is the most likely reason for the inclusion of this “first miracle” story in the Gospel of John. John doesn’t have a birth narrative. He starts with the poetry about the Word becoming flesh, transitions to talking about John the Baptist, and then jumps right into Jesus calling the disciples.

This story comes next. Jesus calls a bunch of disciples one day, he calls a bunch more the next day, and on the third day (yes, people suspect that’s intentional too), Jesus and the disciples go to this wedding. It is, at least as told in John, the very first thing they do as Jesus’s disciples. And then Jesus preforms a miracle that is a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age. It is “a rich symbol in the biblical tradition inferring prosperity, abundance, good times; the wine will overflow the water pots.”⁴ The abundance of God’s goodness is expressed in the abundance of the wine. The new age begins here, and it is declared in a way that the ancients can understand. (Apparently, many ancients – not just the Jewish ones. The same commentator wrote, “A miraculous supply of wine as a sign of the presence of a god is a common motif in Greek folklore.”⁵ She warns us not to take this too seriously. I find it worth mentioning.)

I’m so grateful for this connection to the symbolism that the first hearers of this story would have understood. It makes a lot of sense if this is a symbol that would have been understood as the declaration of a new age of God’s work in the world. In fact, this functions much like Matthew and Luke’s Christmas stories function in their gospels.

Now, to take a step further backward, the setting of this narrative at a wedding is likely not trivial either. The metaphor of marriage as a way of understanding God’s relationship to Israel was longstanding. The prophets played with it extensively. Our Hebrew Bible passage draws the prior narratives to bring a new one to light. The idea of God and Israel as married was old. The prophets who spoke of the coming exile talked about God’s right to divorce Israel. The prophets of the exile talked about God’s abandonment of God’s wife Israel. And then, in this passage, God restores Israel to her status as wife. Dr. Rick Nutt, chair of the department of Religion and Philosophy at Muskingum University in Ohio writes:

“God’s liberating action grows out of God’s covenant promise to Israel – for marriage always evokes ideas of covenant. The gods of the ancient world were often capricious, one could not know when favor or disfavor might be forthcoming. YHWH, on the other hand, imposed limits on God’s freedom to exercise power. In the covenant, God promised steadfast love – hesed – as the basis of the relationship with the people, and in return the people promised to love and serve God. Judgement may come, but it will always be on the basis of the covenant – and because of the covenant, restoration will always follow. Liberation renews Israel’s relationship with God to wholeness, because God will be true to covenant.”⁶

I believe that the writer of the Gospel of John was a smart man, well versed in the scriptures of his day. He knew what he was doing, when placing this story at a wedding feast. He was intentionally invoking the concept of God as a loving spouse, even if only as a underlying theme. The words “My Delight is in Her” from Isaiah end up as one of the backgrounds that set the scene for Jesus. The writer was intentionally developing the idea of wine as a symbol of life, and of God’s presence, and of a new age in the history of God’s work among the people. The incredible excess of the story: the presence of SIX empty water jars, their large size, the water filled to the brim and nearly over flowing, and the goodness of the wine serve as symbols of the abundance of God’s love – hesed– in this new age.

There are still plenty of questions, but this story is not accidental. Thanks be to God for reminders of life, abundance, and goodness. May we learn to live fully into life, abundance, and goodness. Amen

___

Sermon Talkback Questions

What are your questions about this passage?
Which interpretation was most interesting to you?
What are the problems, and powers, of the metaphor of marriage for God and “the people”?
What else can wine symbolize?
In what ways did Jesus usher in a “new age”? In what ways are we still waiting for one?
What is your general opinion of the Gospel of John?
What might be good alternatives to discussing the rich wonder of WINE?
What do you take from this passage today?

—

1Robert B. Brearley, “Pastoral Perspective on John 2:1-11” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 262.

2Ibid.

3Gail O’Day, “John” in New Interpreter’s Study Bible, vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 538

4Linda McKinnish Bridges, “Exegetical Perspective on John 2:1-11” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 265.

5Ibid

6Rick Nutt, “Theological Perspective on Isaiah 61:1-5” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 246.

–

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

January 17, 2016