“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

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December 12, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Soft Eyes and Third Ways” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18

As a matter of faith, whenever it is possible, I believe in refusing the binary and looking for a third way. I believe God is creative, I believe in win-wins, and I believe more goodness is possible than I can anticipate.

You, in this church, have affirmed this belief for me time, and time again. You have found third ways, you have shown me third ways, you have stayed with each other long enough to see past seeming binaries and found the shared values underneath. I believed this when I came here, intellectually, but I believe it in my body and soul now.

A few years ago, at a retreat, we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” It looked and sounded ridiculous. We were broken into sets of three, and one at a time each of us was asked to stand tall while the other two pulled as hard as they could on the arms of the person standing. However, each of us did this three different ways. First, we fought as hard as we could against the pressure. It was overwhelming. Then we just, let go, and let the pressure take us down. It was demoralizing. But, finally, we let the pressure come without fighting it. And, all of a sudden, the pressure felt like a good stretch. It was possible to withstand the pulling, and stand tall, indefinitely.

We then compared that to staring at something as hard as we could, to glancing and looking away, and to looking, but letting our eyes soften and see “through” what we looked at. This is third way stuff. This is refusing “all or nothing” thinking, and engaging in “both/and” thinking.

This is important, more now than ever. We have learned that our society has been under attack for quite some time by foreign countries that want to destabilize us by fanning the flames of cultural difference. We have also learned that social media sites, our email providers, our phones, and our web browsers are tracking our every move to try to understand us and our perspectives in order to make money off of us. And, they’ve discovered, telling us things that make us angry, and creating “us versus them” thinking (binaries!) is really great for business.

There is significant but mostly invisible pressure on us to enter into binaries and disregard the humanity of people on the other side. But, our faith teaches us that our shared humanity, the sacredness of every person that derives directly from God, is definitional. We seek to connect, not to disconnect. We seek to understand, not to dismiss. We seek to love, not to hate.

This is counter-cultural work, and it is emotionally challenging work. It is hard to be creative and find the third way, and it is nearly impossible when we’re riddled with anxiety or anger. It is hard to slow down and figure out what’s really going on, so a new solution might emerge, when everything feels urgent. And, too, it is hard to care when so much of what is live-giving and wonderful about life isn’t available right now.

As I hear Luke telling us about the preaching of John the Baptist though, I’m struck that in his shocking ways, he calls us to exactly this sort of work. John calls the ones who have come to hear him “a brood of vipers” which was super insulting, and not how polite people spoke to each other. I notice that it is a violent image. Vipers are a danger to life.

I also notice that John the Baptist calls out three groups of people, and they’re surprising. First he calls out anyone wealthy enough to have more than enough. Two coats, more food than they need. That feels like a pretty low standard of wealth, but since many people in that day (and ours) weren’t sufficiently clothed and even more didn’t have enough nourishment, anyone with too much was seen as hoarding what others needed. Then he calls out tax collectors and soldiers, and that feels REALLY weird to me. Of course, Jesus will do some work with a tax collector too, but both tax collectors and soldiers – in an occupied state – were part of the system of oppression that kept the poor in poverty and used their labor to enrich the already rich.

And John the Baptist doesn’t tell any of these people that they have to quit their jobs or change everything about their lives. He JUST tells them that they need to stop hurting other people. Take the two cloaks, give one way. Take the extra food, give it away. Don’t take more tax money than what you have to, even if you are allowed to. And, don’t extort people or act out violently against them. Take what you have and let it be enough, even if other people have more.

That is… refuse to participate in oppression, which in essence is refusing to participate in violence because violence takes a lot of forms and one of them is keeping food from those who need it to live.

This theme unites John the Baptist and the one he would baptize, Jesus. They created movements of people who refused to participate in violence. Their words and actions echo through the ages, asking us to do the same.

What does non- violence look like? Well, it is seemingly simple and difficult enough to engage us for our whole lives – like faith. For some it takes on pacifism, a big one. But it also is in the little every day things. It looks like intentionality with words we use and don’t use. It is in how we treat those in our households, and those in our inner circles, and those in our church family. It over looks like speaking in “I-statements” and taking responsibility for our emotions, and thinking more than once before we pass along information that we don’t know to be true. And, it means not kicking people when they’re down – OR UP. It means paying attention to our buying habits and how people were treated when they made the things we buy. It means paying attention to investments if we’re lucky enough to have them, and considering which companies are engaged in violence. Perhaps most challengingly, it also means treating ourselves without violence, including in the ways we speak to ourselves inside ourselves!

AND it means disengaging from binaries, and finding deeper truths about people, groups, and ways forward.

One big piece of refusing to participate in violence is engaging in compassion. Letting compassion take a bigger and bigger space in our lives. Learning how to be compassionate to ourselves and then letting that extend to others and then letting that expand even further.

And I’m here to tell you that this is really, really hard, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. My heart is more tender than it used to be, and the brokenness everywhere hurts me more than it used to, and it constantly threatens to overwhelm me.

But that same exercise on “soft eyes” and letting pulling turn into stretching was fundamentally about standing in the “tragic gap” between what IS and what SHOULD be, and letting it break us open without letting it break us. Because there are (at least) three ways to respond to the suffering around us. We can ignore it and push it away because it is too hard, but that doesn’t change anything. We can let it in and let it break us, but that actually doesn’t change anything either except that there is a little more brokenness. OR, we can let the brokenness break us open, and be present to it without drowning in it.

This is what we aim for, and we’ll fail both ways much of the time. But, on this third Sunday of Advent, I want to be sure to remind all of us about what can keep us upright in the Tragic Gap, and how we can be with brokenness without breaking, and let compassion hurt but not drown us.

There are two keys to this: God, and joy. They’re related. (Pretty deeply.) Finding spiritual practices that get you centered are imperative to life-long kindom building. They keep us upright. They keep us compassionate. They also tell us when it is time to take breaks. AND they keep reminding us that there is ALSO joy.

We live in a broken AND beautiful world. There is violence AND wonder.

An article I read in The Atlantic this week suggested thinking of things you used to do just because you liked them, and figuring out what you liked about them, in order to find what you might like doing now. This was intended to apply to those of us who have forgotten how to play and have fun.1

Let joy in. Play! Laugh! Have fun! Giggle if you possibly can. Fill yourself up. It is good in and of itself to enjoy life, AND it is NECESSARY to have joy in order to be able to do the work to build the kindom, a place of profound joy. We can’t build it if we don’t know it, we need to have joy to make space for joy. So dear ones seek God and joy… they matter on their own and they help us be compassionate and nonviolent. Thanks be to God for joy! Amen

1https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/how-care-less-about-work/620902/

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 12, 202