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August 13, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Glimmers” based on Psalm 10:1-14 and John 10:11-16

You may already know this, but sheep are the vulnerable adults of the animal kingdom. They are epically poor at making good decisions. Left to their own devices they will eat themselves to death, because they just don’t know when to stop. Because of their woolly coats, which weigh them down when wet, they’re picky about where they drink. They’re vulnerable to predators, and can get lost easily.

It is because they are so vulnerable that the role of shepherd is so important. It is probably because they are so vulnerable and in need of help and support that they come to know and rely on their shepherd.

It is probably because we’re all sometimes vulnerable, and can make bad decisions, and have particular needs we can’t easily meet that the metaphor of God as a Shepherd makes sense. Well, that and the Bible was written when agricultural metaphors were the most easily available and understood ones 😉

This passage from John fits easily into the explanations we have of the 23rd Psalm, where God is a shepherd. Here, Jesus is the shepherd, right? And here it is explicit that the care the shepherd gives is being willing to run INTO danger to protect the sheep while others would choose to run away. And the shepherd is the one the sheep know and trust, and no one else is. Lovely.

Perhaps my favorite part of this passage is the end where Jesus claims there are other flocks who also listen to his voice, and it is his intention to bring them together. That sounds right- that there are others who also know love and also are loved and that Jesus is able to offer care for more individuals than we might have thought possible.

I adore, too, the intimacy of the passage, the reminder that a shepherd and their sheep KNOW EACH OTHER well, and know each other’s voices, and respond to each other. That fits, because humans and sheep are all mammals and mammals are all about connecting to each other.

It leads me to wondering about how it is we experience that kind of intimacy with the Divine. God, we say, is everywhere in everything and always around us and always available. Yet, not every moment of our lives feels saturated with the Divine, and quite often we’re too busy doing other things to connect. Or maybe God feels farther away and the connection is harder to come by.

This week I’ve been thinking about the reminders of God and God’s goodness that glimmer in the world and help us remember to connect. I’ve been thinking about it because I spent a week at camp and the whole week was just one big glimmer of wonderfulness and love, of being wrapped in creation and there being spaciousness to connect with wonderful people, and time to savor it all. But, it turns out, I came home from camp and reality as I usually experience it hit me … well, pretty fast and pretty hard and I was disoriented.

Because usually my life involves bearing witness to a lot of pain, and a lot of our society’s brokenness and when I came back to that with my guard down it HURT. (Which is also good, I think, but that’s for another day.)

And yet, my guard needs to come down sometimes. And sometimes I need to take a walk with dear ones and marvel over the many colors of mushrooms growing in the woods, or watch a beaver swim with a big branch, or just sit and watch a rainstorm come by from a dry porch, or talk about scripture with people who just love it. (Camp. WOW.)

So I’ve been thinking about joy, and where to access it. And I’ve been thinking about hope and where to access it. Because I don’t think that the injustices of the world or the pain that humans experience are about to stop, but I don’t want those to be the ONLY things that get my attention.

And that’s where “glimmers” come in. I shared this on the church’s Facebook page:

Did you know about glimmers?

Glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. Like a micro moment that makes you happier, a little moment of awe, something that makes you feel hope. Once you start looking for them and embracing them, your life feels so much sweeter.

I’m actually going to take that a bit further though. I think a glimmer is a glimpse of God, or God’s love, or God’s goodness, or God’s desire for us to live full and abundant lives. And they’re reminders that we can trust in God and God is with us – like John says.

So I’ve been watching for glimmers. Baptism is ALWAYS one. This baptism all the more so for me, after having had the chance to confirm Chris in the early years of my ministry here. I have been reminded that we have rainstorms AND porches here in Schenectady, as well as sunrises and sunsets and even sometimes stars and all of that glimmers. Good food glimmers. Shared excitement glimmers. Great ideas glimmer. Quiet moments of understanding glimmer. Debbie’s fingers on a keyboard glimmer. Maybe it is too obvious, but the stained glass in here glimmers – and it is awfully good to remember to look!!

Once I started looking again, the glimmers were everywhere. Oh, Andrew, I hope you grow up seeing glimmers everywhere every day. I hope your family does too and they teach you to appreciate it. I hope your churches – here and at home – do too and they teach you to appreciate it. And, by the way – all of the rest of you too.

I wish you the capacity to see the glimmers all around you, and the ability to remember they are signs of God’s love, and the development of trust in God that can come from it all – so that we all learn even better how to hear and trust God’s voice.

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

August 13, 2023

(Thanks to Joan E. Carey for photo.)

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Untitled

February 19, 2023
by Sara Baron

“There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus” based on Zechariah 8:1-8 and Luke 7:24-25

The United Methodist Church is a big tent denomination. We are large enough to include a wide variety of perspectives and values, or at least we have been. (Some of the most conservative US churches are choosing to leave right now.)

Many years ago I was sent to an area of the country that tends to practice Methodism rather differently than I do, and then I was asked to lead a small group of seniors in college who were experiencing a call to ordained ministry in The United Methodist church. This seemed rife with issues.

They spoke of God differently than I did. They made assumptions about God that I didn’t share. They’d lived different lives than I could understand, and let’s be honest, I was pretty confused even by the food.

And, in the midst of all that, there was something profoundly familiar in talking with those college students. The differences in how we understood God weren’t big enough to negate that I could sense God’s love in and for them, and the tingling awareness of their faithful decisions to live their lives to share God’s love.

The most embarrassing part of this for me is that I was surprised. I discovered that I had believed that people who thought and spoke of God differently than I did weren’t having authentic experiences of God. I discovered in that experience how small minded I was. And as I processed that, I was reminded that everyone is on a faith journey, and at every step along it we are doing the best we can, and we are WRONG a lot, and probably RIGHT a lot too, but no one has it all down. And even if they did, context changes everything, and requires adaptations again the next minute.

The places I thought the others were wrong didn’t negate God at work in their lives. The places I was wrong didn’t negate God at work in my life.

It turns out that I’m far more obsessed with perfection than God is, and God is willing to work with humans as we are. Phew.

Many years later, three dear friends and I went on retreat to write a confirmation curriculum that we would be excited to teach. We asked ourselves questions about what really mattered about our faith in our own lives, and how we might communicate that to others. The confirmation that I have taught here over the years is that curriculum, intentionally named “A Jesus Way of Living.” A Jesus Way, not The Jesus Way because we knew by then that what worked for us wasn’t going to be what worked for everyone, and that was one of the most important things we wanted to teach the young people in Confirmation Class.

A quick reference point: the vows from the baptisms today were that we as a church, along with parents and godparents will do all that we can to each these young people what we know of God and God’s ways. Confirmation class aims to teach older kids what they need to know about the church, it’s beliefs, and other ways of being faithful so that they can decide whether or not to “confirm” for themselves the vows made at their baptism.

One of the key components of the “A Jesus Way of Living” Confirmation Class is spending the first 15 minutes of any class engaged in a wide variety of spiritual practices and prayer traditions. We hoped to teach kids that there are many ways to access the Divine, and start them along the road of discovering how they TEND to best connect with God. This is, of course, incredibly personal, and every person who has been through the course has different experiences of each kind of prayer.

All of this seems like an affirmation of the reading from Luke today where Jesus talks about how different his ministry is from John’s without claiming that either one is better than the other. Right? It ends with Jesus saying, “For John the Baptizer has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you all say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Woman has come eating and drinking, and you all say ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”1

Two men, making opposite choices with how to live out their faith lives, and they were BOTH RIGHT. That’s what the last line means. Wisdom is Holy and Divine Wisdom, sometimes talked about in the Bible as if Wisdom is it’s own entity, and in the Gospels as if Jesus is Wisdom’s child. Wisdom is also consistently female in the Bible.

Dr. Gafney says of this passage, “What behaviors does Jesus associate with his divine Mother? A life full of joy and celebration, including those who, in the words of Paul, are low status and despised. Yet he does not disdain the ascetic’s path John follows: indeed he commends John with unparalleled praise. There is no single way to follow Jesus.”2

I hope that this information about there being many ways to follow Jesus is freeing.

But I want to also admit that it can be really heavy. I think it is easier to believe that there unique right answers and if one simply follows all the rules everything will work out OK. It is easier to believe that there is a right way and a wrong way and all one has to do is do things right.

It is way, way, way harder to believe that God works differently in different contexts, and in each of us, and even differently in each of us in different parts of our lives. It means that we are always learning, and changing, and seeking to hear the Divine EVEN THOUGH we know we will never hear God perfectly. It means often having to forgive one’s self for beliefs that one no longer holds (Like thinking that God only authentically works in people who think like I do), and that’s heavy. It means constantly letting go of assumptions about God and Godly living that aren’t bringing life anymore, and that too can be difficult. Worst of all, in my opinion, it means being open to a huge range of possibilities and NOT being able to cross any of them out as WRONG, but rather having to slow down enough to hear the wisdom I hold, and the ways God is working in me, to decide which way to go. It is slower, more careful, and much less certain work. It can be tiring.

That doesn’t make it unimportant though.

Now, I’m going to have to explain a little bit of context in order to explain how Zechariah fits into all of this, but I’m getting back to listening to what God is up to.

In 587-586 BCE Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading army of Babylon when the King had decided to stop making tribute payments. Many were killed, the temple was destroyed, the poor were left undefended, and the wealthy and educated were force marched to Babylon where they stayed for generations. In 538 BCE the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persian Empire. Starting then, some of the descendants of those who had been force marched to Babylon started to return, and over a VERY long time they eventually rebuild the Temple, the City, and the community of faith.

The story of that rebuilding is what we’re working on in Bible Study, it is also told in different ways by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. Because, much like there being many ways to follow Jesus, the Bible is at peace with there being many ways to tell a story, and doesn’t assume that only one perspective is “right.” Zechariah, in our passage today, is speaking about hope. God is going to return to Jerusalem with the people, and full and abundant life will be present again. I rather love that the way he talks about that is by saying that there will again be elder women and elder men sitting on the streets watching, and there will again be girls and boys playing in the streets. The abundance of life is captured by the presence of the old and the young together, and that is a great image of wholeness.

The line that really pulls on me is attributed to God and says, “Though it seems miraculous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it seem miraculous to me, says the COMMANDER of winged warriors.” That is, God says, “Sure, you don’t think it is possible

that you can rebuild and life can be good again for all people. But should I let your fears stop what I want to do???”

And that’s where I think we come back to listening to God, and listening broadly. I think that God is often dreaming and nudging us towards bigger and more wonderful things then we can dream on our own. Other times God is dreaming and nudging us towards smaller and more wonderful things than we would allow ourselves. Listening to God means being open to an astounding amount of love and how it wants to move in the world, and how it wants to move in US in the world.

So, just in case I haven’t been clear enough yet, this is my point today: There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus, you have to figure out your way yourself, AND what God is up to in the world and in you is meant to be beautiful, wonderful, and loving. And I think it is worth the time to figure out and to live it. Amen

1Luke 7:33-35, “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church” translation by Dr. Wil Gafney.

2Gafney, 70.

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

February 19, 2023

Sermons

“What IS this baptism thing?” based on Acts 19:1-7 and…

January 14, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This week, statements were made that said that some people are more important than other people, and some places have people that matter while others don’t. The statements made this week were a moral atrocity. While this was exceptionally direct and overt, unfortunately, such statements are made on a regular basis, most often in budgets.

This past Tuesday I went to the NY statehouse to advocate for fair funding of New York State schools. New York state schools are THE most segregated in the United States (you heard me correctly). While New York spends rather a lot on its public school systems, it does not spend that money equitably. Because of the hard work of education advocates (and multiple lawsuits), in 2007 New York State created a “foundation aid formula”. The formula was meant to counter two pieces of inequality: the reality that school district’s primary funding comes from property taxes which can vary GREATLY between wealthy and impoverished communities; and that the needs of students can vary greatly between wealthy and impoverished communities.

The formula, carefully created, has never actually been funded. Instead, already wealthy (and usually white) school districts get a higher percentage of the money than average, while already impoverished (and particularly schools with many minority students) get a lower PERCENTAGE of the money than average. To get to particulars, the Schenectady City School District is underfunded by $44 MILLION according to the foundation aid formula, like many upstate cities’ schools are. That is, the New York government has an education budget that is as offensive as the language spoken in the Whitehouse this week.

Similarly, the United Methodist Church also FUNCTIONS as if some people matter more than others. I’m not just talking about the history of the Central Jurisdiction (if this is news to most of you, we’ll do a second hour on it later), or pay gaps for clergy on the basis of race and gender, or any of the other multitude of issues within the United States. I’m not even ONLY talking about the discrimination of LGBTQIA+ people in the church. There are ALSO issues with how the church functions as a global church. Namely, our constitution differentiates power between churches and conferences in the United States and those in the rest of the world, and the church as a whole functions as if the churches outside the United States are our colonies. While we do have some United Methodists in Europe, the vast majority of United Methodists outside of the United States are in Africa and the Philippines. This means that global colonization history AND racism continue to impact our church in every day of its life, and the colonization AND racism are WRITTEN INTO OUR CONSTITUTION.

To put it bluntly, we are not yet living the dream that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offered us.

But, we are still dreaming it. Within the church, the dream is powerfully held and advocated for by the Love Your Neighbor Coalition, methodized as “LYNC.” LYNC consists of: all of the racial ethnic caucuses in the United Methodist Church, 4 groups organizing around LGBTQIA+ rights in the church, MFSA, Fossil Free UMC, and the UM association of ministers with disabilities. It is an amazing, profound, and inspiring group! LYNC looks and feels like the church as it should be – it is still messy with a lot of view points – but it is loving, respectful, and capable of growth. LYNC has JUST released a statement about the church it dreams of being a part of. LYNC’s current work is centered on the African concept of “ubuntu, and early in the statement, it explains “ubuntu” by quoting Achbishop Desmond Tutu:

The first law of our being is that we are in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation… [Ubuntu] is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness: it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are.¹

I want to read you the abstract of LYNC’s statement, because I think it is profound, because I think it dreams the church as God does, and because I think it contains truth beyond the bounds of the United Methodist Church. It isn’t short, exactly, but it is as concise as a dream can be:

The United Methodist Church is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation opportunity. A harm has been named within the body and brought to light. How we respond will define our future. There are responses that will promote healing, restore relationships, restore our ubuntu, and lead to this struggle being remembered as a restorative struggle. And there are other responses that will amplify the pain. It is time to banish this period of legislated discrimination to the dustbins of our history.

Therefore, the Love Your Neighbor Coalition calls upon the Commission on a Way Forward and the Council of Bishops to develop a plan that maintains the UM connection and removes all forms of language that discriminates against LGBTQ persons from the Book of Discipline.

We call upon the delegates to the 2019 special session of General Conference to act to maintain the UM connection and remove all forms of language that discriminates against LGBTQ persons from the Book of Discipline.

Furthermore, we call upon all United Methodists to join together in love, grace, and compassion, to recognize “us” reflected in each other, and to work to strengthen our relationships and our United Methodist connection and restore our ubuntu, regardless of where we stand on the theological or political spectrums.

Finally, as we look beyond the 2019 General Conference, we call upon those who become delegates to the 2020 General Conference and upon all United Methodists to careful examination of other ways in which we harm our ubuntu, other ways in which we perpetuate new and historic injustices against one another such as sexism, racism, misogyny and colonialism, and to join together to work toward our continuing restoration and sanctification in those regards as well.

(Amen) It is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to dream and work with LYNC. In fact, I think it is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to dream with God and work towards the kindom.

The good news is, our baptisms calls us to seek a just (and anti-racist) world. Baptism not only welcomes us into the church, with its radical love and inclusion, but it welcomes us into the work of creating the kindom and working with God to fulfill God’s dreams.

In our Acts passage, the newly baptized are said to prophesy. As Rev. Dr. Ruthanna B. Hooke, explains, “in Luke’s gospel and Acts, to prophesy is to speak about the present; it is to speak God’s name on behalf of God’s work in the world.”² She goes on to say, “The gift of prophesy calls us to proclaim what God is doing even now in our world, and to do so with boldness. This Spirit moves us to proclaim God’s good news to the poor and liberation to the captives. This gift empowers us to ‘speak truth to power,’ confronting the ‘rules and authorities’ of this world with the revolutionary message of the gospel, and trusting that when we are called up on to offer this witness the Holy Spirit will gives us the words to say.”³ From that definition, the baptized are CALLED to prophesy, even when the truth we speak is uncomfortable for others to hear. We are CALLED to seek justice, including with our words. Of course, the more difficult part is finding the words, and the time, and the way to speak. Those are the struggles of day to day life of faith. The blessing here is the promise that God is working with us and through us to help us find the ways to speak!

In Mark, we hear a story of Jesus’s baptism. The New Oxford Annotated Bible says of the passage, “Jesus himself is baptized into the renewal movement that began before him.”⁴ This is a very important statement! First of all, Jesus was a Jewish man baptized by a Jewish man, and the first meaning of the ritual was found in their shared Jewish routes. Secondly, John the Baptist was leading a renewal movement in hopes of helping the people be freed from oppression. By the best work of scholars, we think that Jesus was baptized by John as a ritual of becoming a disciple of John’s. It is so helpful to remember that he was learning from a person already in the movement, even as he eventually became the teacher. In that way, Jesus is like the rest of us: both a learner in and a teacher in the movement we’re a part of.

This baptism thing is an entrance into the work of the Body of Christ – the work of dreaming with God and building God’s kindom. It is work that decries racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other claims that one human is more important than another. The final statement of our Gospel passage is, “This is my child, the beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.” We, as disciples of Jesus, believe those to be INHERENT to God’s nature – a blessing God has spoken over each and every human being. It is our life-long goal to learn to treat each other as such – both individually as as parts of our society and church.

As LYNC says, may we remember that we are called to “careful examination of other ways in which we harm our ubuntu, other ways in which we perpetuate new and historic injustices against one another such as sexism, racism, misogyny and colonialism, and to join together to work toward our continuing restoration and sanctification in those regards as well.” May we use our voices to prophesy whenever a statement is made – directly or indirectly – that fasley claims that some people aren’t beloved by God. Because, dear ones, we are ALL God’s children, and as such, beloved. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope For Our Time (Doubleday, 2005).

2Ruthanna B. Hooke, “Pastoral Perspective on Acts 19:1-7” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1 edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) 230.

3Hooke, 234.

4Richard A. Horsely, “Mark” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third Edition, edited by Michael D. Coogan (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 58 New Testament.

–

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

January 14. 2018

Sermons

“A Do’” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-22

January 10, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A
long time ago, before I had realized the wisdom of reading novellas
to children for Children’s Time, I had prepared a Children’s Time on
baptism. This was when I was serving the Morris United Methodist
Church, and it turned out we had a baptism that day. When Children’s
Time began there were two children present: an infant and a two year
old. This wasn’t going to make my work particularly easy.

At
the Morris United Methodist Church, they do baptisms in the back of
the sanctuary. The font is in the center of aisle right in the back,
against the wall. A baptismal banner hangs above it. They do this
on purpose. Their idea is that baptism is the entrance to the church
family, so it makes sense to have it in the area they enter from.
When the time in the service came to do baptisms everyone would stand
up and turn to watch. That is, everyone who could. There was one
man in the church who couldn’t stand: the pastor emeritus who was in
a wheelchair. The space where the pew had been cut out was all the
way in the back row, so he just got turned around in his wheelchair.
As time when on, we got smart, and when babies were being baptized I
would put them in his arms while I baptized them so we got to do it
together.

In
that church I was responsible for the creation of the bulletin (which
meant that there was a game entitled “who can find one of Sara’s
typos first”) and I would pick images for the font cover of the
bulletin. That week I’d taken a picture of the front doors of the
church and made it the image on the cover of the bulletin. As
planned, I asked the kids what was on the cover of the bulletin. The
two year old cheerfully responded, “a do’”. At this point, I was
in trouble. The response “a do’” was entirely correct, but I
couldn’t do much more with it. Somehow, and it felt as amazing then
as it does now in telling it, at that point a 10 year old showed up
and joined children’s time. So I asked, “why would I have a
picture of doors on the cover of the bulletin.” The 10 old rolled
his eyes at the stupidness of my question and responded, “Because
you are doing a baptism today, and those are the church doors, and
baptism is an entrance to the church family like the doors are the
entrance to the church.” The adults responded with an enthusiastic
“oh!” and accused me of prepping the kid ahead of time. (I
didn’t! I swear. He was just that smart. And he thought it was so
obvious as to be beneath him.)

I’ve
always appreciated the wisdom of the Morris United Methodist Church,
and their understanding of baptism as an entrance. There are many
good ways to think of baptism, and that’s certainly one of them.
Martin Luther King Jr. was known to speak of the Beloved Community,
an idea that sounds like another name for the kin-dom of God to me.
According to the King Center,

“For
Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be
confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which
lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved
Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be
attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the
philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr.
King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people
can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community,
poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because
international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism
and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be
replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In
the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by
peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries,
instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and
hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military
conflict.”¹

Rev.
Dr. King’s wording is a smooth fit with the gospel lesson. In Luke
the Divine message doesn’t show up until after Jesus has been
baptized and is praying. The language is similar in each of the
gospels, the Divine message says, “You
are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.“ (Luke
3:22b, NRSV) Luke is one one of the gospel writers to suggest that
Jesus had to wait in line like the rest of the crowd to be baptized.
He was one of many.

It
has always seemed to me that the words of that came at Jesus’ baptism
are the words intended for every baptism. “This is my Child, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It suggests that each
baptized person has been named as God’s beloved in that experience,
and that the community of baptized people IS the Beloved Community.
Of course, to fit King’s vision we need more training in nonviolence
and peaceful conflict-resolution, but if you keep paying attention to
the Children’s Time novella, that may count!

Now,
baptism is a sacrament. Most people agree that a sacrament is an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Or, a
“sign-act” which is an action that also has words to go along
with it. The other sacrament that we acknowledge as United
Methodists is communion. I think it is important to note that God’s
love is available to us at all times in our lives. The sacraments
are simply times when it is easier for us to remember that! God
doesn’t change. We are more attentive to God in those moments.

We
accept baptism and communion as sacraments because the Bible tells us
that Jesus participated in them and instructed other to do so a well!
In baptism, the grace that is offered is the
initiating act of a covenant. Baptism is the covenantal act of
acknowledging the love of God and the way that it is expressed by
family, sponsors, clergy, and church community. The acceptance of
the covenant is an act of inclusion into the Church, the community
that is aware of God’s grace. The candidate for baptism has two
primary responsibilities. The first is to be open to the experience
of being loved, both in the ritual of baptism throughout the rest of
life. The second is to complete the covenant, to seek always to love
God and love neighbors as the response to God’s love.

God’s
grace is available at all times, and thus is available at baptism;
the ritual cannot exist without God’s grace. Baptism is a public
act of accepting God’s love, but God’s love exists for each
person with or without baptism. The
covenant is eternal, even if the person ignores it. God does not
stop loving. The water is symbolic, and as such its efficacy is not
based on its quantity. That is a baptism is real whether the water
is poured or sprinkled over a person OR they are dunked!

I
haven’t ever done a baptism where a person is dunked, although I was
trained in it in seminary. I suspect that symbolism of new life is
more tangible in those baptisms. When I was in college one of the
churches in town left the doors to its sanctuary open at all times.
I would often go there to pray, and to ponder. The entrance to that
sanctuary was though two sets of solid wooden doors. The first set
connected the church to outside. The second set connected the
entrance to the sanctuary. The space between them was pretty small,
and there were no windows or lights. (This was in New Hampshire, I’m
pretty sure the design was intended to keep the cold out.) I usually
paused in that space between the sets of doors. I didn’t yet know
the word “liminal,” but I knew that I liked the in-betweenness
of that space. Between the sets of doors I was not in the outside
world, nor was I in the sanctuary. I was in the middle, in nowhere.
Young adulthood often felt disorienting, and being in a physical
space that reflected that no-whereness brought it some peace.

I
suspect that for those who undergo full immersion baptism, the moment
under the water might be the the space between the doors. The person
is, symbolically, dead to their old life and yet not yet alive in
their new one. I’ve worried, at times, about the pressure a person
might feel under if they understood baptism that way. What happens
the first time that they are cranky, or tempted, or mean! Do they
worry that the baptism didn’t work? Do they feel unworthy?

I
hope that baptism is a reminder that we are Beloved, and that when we
participate in the baptisms of others we remember the covenant also
applies to us! God’s grace is exceptionally powerful stuff. It
counters any argument that suggests that we are not enough, that we
have to work harder or have more in order to be sufficient. It
reminds us that our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits are beloved
JUST AS THEY ARE, and that we need not earn our way into God’s favor.

It
does occur to me at times that believing in God’s grace is much more
radical than simply believing in God. As odds would have it, I
figure that God’s existence is a 50/50. It can’t be proven either
way. (Or, perhaps, the existence of God is equivalent to Schroeder’s
cat. On a strictly logical level, God both is and isn’t! Please
take that idea lightly.) On the other hand, the premise that the God
who exists is benevolent, that the One who Created cares, that the
Energy and Connector of All that Is is by nature Grace – all of
that is much less logical.

Anyone
looking at the injustices and evils of the world could easily
conclude that a Higher Power simply doesn’t care. Because, they
would conclude, if a Higher Power exists AND cares, then why are
there such awful realities? Therefore, a logical person might
conclude, one of 3 things must be true:

God
doesn’t exist.

God
doesn’t care.

God
doesn’t have the power to change things.

To
be fair, I’ve heard people suggest that there is a 4^th
option, that God’s ways are not like our ways and that what we see as
injustice is OK with God, but that’s such a lousy argument that I
refuse to work with it.

My
training has been in a theology that turns to #3, “God doesn’t have
the power to change things.” Process theology argues over whether
God CAN’T interfere with human will or simply WON’T, but admits that
if you want to understand God as existing and loving, you are forced
by logic to concede that God does not stop us from doing each other
harm. Instead, Process Theology says, God works with all of us all
the time. God “whispers” to us suggestions of how we might act
in the most loving of ways. God works with us where we are and
offers us the possibility of turning in good directions. However, we
are truly free to ignore God’s whispers, hopes, and suggestions and
do the opposite. Whether this is because God simply refuses to treat
us as slaves or because creation itself won’t allow the violation of
imposed will, we are free to do good and we are free to do harm, and
we do both.

And
yet, we are Beloved. We are Beloved when we live out God’s love to
the fullest and share love with all we meet. We are Beloved when we
are simply awful, and do profound and lasting damage to others.
God’s love comes from God’s nature, not from our earning it. It may
not be logical, the way we see things. God’s existence is fair game.
God’s GRACE, God’s LOVE, God’s desire for goodness isn’t something
we can derive from pure logic. We find it scripture. We hear about
in tradition and from those we know in the Body of Christ. We can
experience it in our bodies, and we can learn about it through a
variety of fields of research if we look with the right lenses. But
it is a matter of faith to believe in a God of love.

And
yet, the do’ is open to all.

Thanks
be to God. Amen

1 http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy#sub4

Sermons

“Promise and Hope” based on Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

November 29, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The holidays are supposed to be the highlight of the year – right? In truth they’re much more complicated than that. Holidays are overlaid with expectations and conflicting needs. Buttons can get pushed and desperately needed healing can fail to appear. Additionally, holidays bring up grief from the past, awareness of who is no longer present at the table, and who didn’t care enough to return. Many are lonely in our world, and loneliness can be strongest when happiness is most expected. Or, perhaps, time with family and friends is quite lovely! But afterward is a bit of a let down. Holidays are supposed to be the highlight, and that’s exactly what makes them so complicated. (Please note the existence of the Longest Night service on December 16^th at 7.)

Advent is a strange little occurrence in the midst of the secular “holiday season.” In the Christian liturgical calendar, we are in a season of waiting and hoping. Christmas itself doesn’t show up in the 25^th, and lasts all 12 days to January 5^th, culminating the next day in Epiphany. I have come to love the contrast between the busyness of the secular holiday season and the quietness of Advent. Together, they’re quite fulfilling.

Advent starts a new liturgical year, and we start in the waiting and yearning for God to act that has pervaded humanity for millenia. In Jeremiah, the yearning has emerged from military defeat and exile. Jeremiah preached before, during, and after the siege of Jerusalem. Most of his words are words of warning, of condemnation, and of despair. (After all, he was warning people about the battle they were able to lose.) But in a few passages, he speaks of hope. His hope is one that he does not expect to see in his lifetime, and yet his hope is BIG and profound and still relevant today.

Initially it seems that the promise is that David’s dynasty will not end, that eventually God will raise it back up, and use it to bring justice and goodness back to God’s people. Our passage ends saying, “In those days, Judah will live in safety, and Jerusalem will be secure. The land will known by the name: ‘God is our Justice.” More broadly though, it is a promise of restoration. Translators offer the last line “God is our…” as “justice” at times and “righteousness” at others. I wonder about this word.

There were many interpretations of the exile, I’m pretty sure trying to explain the exile is the theme of the entire Hebrew Bible. None of them came shame free. Either the siege of Jerusalem was lost because the people were unfaithful, or because God was unfaithful, or because God was weak. The generations who lived through the exile and all the generations since have had to struggle to make meaning of the world where the people chosen to be a light on the hill and a blessing to the nations, LOST like any other people. No matter what way it gets explained, there is shame – either shame in action or shame in belief.

Yet the promise is one of calling God Justice or Righteousness. It isn’t just that the people will come home and be safe, it is that their relationship with God will be restored. Perhaps I’m projecting a bit, but in my life, my relationship with God and my relationship with myself have flowed into one another so seamlessly as to be hard to differentiate. For a people struggling with loss and then with shame to return to a relationship of trust in the world with a clarity of God as Justice and Righteousness seems to be a particularly enormous transition.

The words of the prophet Jeremiah set out a guidepost of hope in the midst of destruction. The wholeness they offer seems well tuned into the shame they were responding to. This ancient yearning for the world to be turned right-side-up-again is the start of Advent because it is still our yearning.

We are a people WAITING for fulfillment of promises and for the living of hope. We start the liturgical year in a season of waiting and hope. We believe that God is at work to bring goodness into the world. We believe that the purpose of our existence is to participate in God’s work to bring goodness into the world. And the combination of the two: God’s work with ours is the reason for the hope.

And that brings us to the New Testament reading. These words of Paul are so TRUE! I can feel them in my gut. They sound like my life. I hope they sound like yours. He writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” I could spend all day making a list of people that make me feel like that! And, most of them I have met through the Church. I’ve met the most amazing people, and been regularly astounded by their love of God and people.

One of my favorite activities for teaching about the wonderfulness of “church” is an exercise on the Fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.) The exercise is simple. I ask whatever students I’m teaching to think of people in their church and match them to the gift they most embody. It turns out, though, to be a little bit hard because people have multiple gifts. In every case that I’ve done the exercise, we’ve left with wonder at the amazing gifts of God in community.

When we look through the lens of hope and gratitude, we find there is much to be excited about! God’s work is not done, but God is at work in the world. God’s people are not perfect, but God’s people are gifted by God in astounding ways.

And, the work that needs to be done is not always difficult. When have you been most grateful for another person recently? Taking time to reflect on the goodness helps it shine more light into the darkness. And it isn’t really all that difficult. It may also be a way of entering more fully into the season of advent:

One of the most frequently used forms of prayer in the Christian Tradition is the process of examen. It is a very simple form of prayer. Generally examen is a repeated process, done every day, or every week, or at some regular interval. After intentionally opening yourself to God, you and God consider the two questions (asked here in a number of ways):

What has been the best part of today? Or, what has been the most life-giving piece of today? Or, how have I best been able to shine forth God’s love today? Or, when did I feel most connected to the Divine today?

What has been the worst part of today? Or, what has been the least life-giving piece of today? Or, how have struggled most to show God’s love today? Or, when did I feel most distanced from the Divine today?

After reviewing the time since the last examen and answering the questions, prayer is offered to thank God for the good and the bad.

For those looking for a spiritual practice to guide them this season, that would be my suggestion. I find it is most helpful if the answers to the questions are either recorded in a journal or shared collectively with loved ones. Sometimes patterns emerge that are only visible if the answers are seen together.

In Biblical history, the exiles would come home, but not the same generation as the ones that left, and not all came home. It was 70 years later, and things were never the same again. But they came home, and rebuilt, and it was good again. And then … frankly, it got bad again. Things were pretty awful during the time of Jesus and got even worse afterward.

Life is complicated. I think maybe more so than average when your “promised land” is one of the crossroads of the world that every empire needs to control in order to expand, but really, it is for everyone. Good comes, and its great. Bad comes and it is terrible. Life ebbs and flows, and it is very rarely static.

I think life with God is like floating softly in warm water. There is gentle current nudging us along, but with the ease of a flick of a wrist we can resist the pull of the current. With one good kick we can define our own way. But we can also let the current guide us, and see where it takes us, trusting in what we can’t yet see. This metaphor is not just for the good and easy times. When the water is soft and gentle and warm, it can be a sweet soak, OR we can choose to live in fear of a stronger current, a cold spring, or a thunderstorm. When the clouds turn dark and rainy, when the wind comes with sorrows, we can give up and drown in the sorrow, OR we can swim with all our might for shore, OR we can keep floating, ride out the storm, and see where we are when the sun comes again.

Perhaps this is one of the meanings of the waters of baptism. Of course, at times, we will all fight the current, worry in the warm water, and swim with all our might until we are exhausted. We’re human. We work like that. But the waters of baptism aren’t a white water river, they aren’t an oceans undertow, they aren’t a churning sea. Faith won’t drown us. Sorrow won’t kill us (although it feels like it can). The waters of baptism are trustworthy waters.

Hope is the gentle current. It’s ok to float.

And dear goodness, during this madness of the holiday season, may the lessons of quiet Advent hope be the ones we rest on. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 29, 2015