The Beloveds

January 18, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“The Beloveds” based on Matthew 3:13-17 and The UMC Social Principle on Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Tribalism

Into a world obsessed with those who have power over others, comes this little story about John and Jesus. The story is a fight to the bottom of the power structure. It is clearly told by early Church to tell us things about Jesus, as it doesn’t really fit the realities of his life. But it is, nevertheless, a rich little story.

While Luke goes to great pains to set up John and Jesus as cousins, that doesn’t happen in Matthew. In Matthew, John is a prophet in the wilderness calling the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” and baptizing the people in the River Jordan. John was functioning as a prophet, and he acquired students who learned from him and taught his ways. Students are also known as disciples, and the way one became a disciple of a teacher or prophet was to be baptized by him.

Which is to say, that by the best guess of the best historical scholars, based on what we know, Jesus was a disciple of John. He was baptized by John and learned from him. Later on, when John is killed, Jesus continues the ministry of John INCLUDING taking on his theme “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” as Jesus’s main theme. He does, eventually, make it is own.

So we have this historical detail that Jesus was baptized by John, adapted a bit by the early Jesus movement to make sure it is clear that the point of this story is JESUS and not JOHN. So they have John objecting to it, which probably didn’t happen. And they have the voice of God show up… and I have to say I’m less willing to fight about that one.

Why?

Because at every baptism I have ever been present to it has been as if God has been speaking saying, “this is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So while I’m not about to claim that this voice of God was objectively heard by all present or anything, I think it is one of the fundamental truths of the universe that is especially noticeable at baptism and it seems feasible to me that people could have sensed it at the baptism of Jesus.

In Latin, the phrase is “imago dei” which translates to “in the image of God” and it is the church shorthand for “people are made in the image of God which means that each and every person is holy.” This is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. We share it with other faith traditions, it is a truth that cannot be easily contained.

Everyone is beloved by God. God wishes good for everyone.

And while I always I hear this truth reflected at baptism, let me state explicitly that it applies to people who are not baptized, people who are not Christian, and people who are not religious. Being beloved of God even applies to people who do great harm. That doesn’t mean God is in favor of people harming each other, God’s love for us is just so immense and foundational that it can’t be broken by human action.

(And, yes, sometimes we want to make lists of people who are JUST SO BAD that maybe they’re not included, but dear ones, EVERYONE means EVERYONE. And excluding people from God’s love is not how we practice our faith.)

This is one of the Sundays in the year where I think it is reasonable to engage in extended quotation, particularly of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In my favorite of his sermons, “Loving Your Enemies” he says:

I would like to have you think with me on a passage of scripture that has been a great influence in my life and a passage that I have sought to bring to bear on the whole struggle for racial justice, which is taking place in our nation. The words are found in the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew. And these words flow from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard it said of old that thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”5

These are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries men have argued that the actual practice of this command just isn’t possible. Years ago the philosopher Nietzsche contended that this command illustrates that the Christian ethic is for weak men, not for strong men, and certainly not for the superman.6 And he went on to argue that it was just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth.

But we have come to see today that, far from being the practical, the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words.

There are many things that we must do in order to love our enemies, but I would like to suggest just three. Seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease. If one does not have the capacity to forgive, he doesn’t have the capacity to love. …

The second thing is this. In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is. His evil deed does not represent his whole being. …

The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. …

Now for the moments left, let us turn from the practical “how” to the theoretical “why,” and ask the valid, the vital and valid question, Why should we love our enemies? …

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.1

I commend the whole sermon to you, but I’m going to stop quoting now. While the evils of racism have never been defeated in our country, we are now – again – in a time when the “fierce urgency of now” is present. And, that means that as people of faith, we are once again called upon to reflect HOW we want to seek God’s work in the world. Are we people of love and of non-violence, who believe in the transformational power of love to change the world for the better? Are we willing to be people who practice forgiveness? Are we able to be people who believe in imago dei for those who are doing harm? Are we able to remember that people are more than their worst? Are we willing to reach out in love, over and over again, seeking the well being even of those who do us harm, even when they respond with hatred and violence? Are we willing to use our lives to show the power of meeting hatred with love? Are we strong enough to things God’s way?

There are people in this world, people with power, who don’t believe in imago dei. They believe that SOME people are more HUMAN than others, instead of believing that all people are sacred because all people are loved by God.

Beloveds, these are our “enemies.” And, they are people in need of transformation.

The work of responding to hatred with love changes everything. But it isn’t fast. This is the work of our whole lives. We are often going to be frustrated at backsliding and new incarnations of old evils. But we are people of God. We are people who believe in the power of love. We are people of HOPE. We are people who believe that God’s love is found in everyone and can be kindled into even the people most committed to wrongdoing.

We may not see visible progress right now, but I assure you God is at work. And every act of love matters.

We are called to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and to love our enemies. Because it turns out all of those people are ones to whom God speaks saying “This is my child, my beloved.” Thanks be to God. Amen

1 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten

January 18. 2026

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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January 15, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Foolish and Wise" based on Isaiah 52:1-10 and 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Again and again I find myself at the website for the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and reading over the principles of Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Every time I read them, I learn. Every time I read them I notice again how deeply rooted Rev. Dr. King was in following Jesus, and in the wisdom of other traditions that also teach nonviolence.

This week, the principle that jumped out was number 2: Nonviolence Seeks to Win Friendship and Understanding.

The outcome of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation1

It is always worth reviewing the idea of the Beloved Community, central as it is to Rev. Dr. King’s thinking. The Commission on Religion and Race wrote about this for us, “Philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce first conceived the Beloved Community concept; later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr popularized it during the Civil Rights Movement. Rev. Dr. King envisioned that the Beloved Community to be a global movement where the agape love of God would be the driving force to redemption and reconciliation and a place where all people can share in the abundance of wealth in the world. In the Beloved Community, all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and dehumanization are eradicated and countered by a more inclusive, interdependent existence of people who live in non-violent harmony with one another.”2

That is, the Beloved Community is formed from the truths of our 1 Corinthians passage. The ways to move from systems of power-over, oppression, and hierarchy don’t tend to come from those who hold the power, engage in the oppression, and maintain the hierarchy. Rather, the wisdom to see how things work, why things don’t work, and what could be better tends to come from those disempowered, oppressed, and on the bottom of a hierarchy. The ones lowborn, “foolish” in the ways of the world, insignificant, weak. They’re the ones most likely to listen to God, to respond to God’s urgings, to find new ways.

The nonviolent social movement of Rev. Dr. King, Ghandi, and Jesus are most notable to me, in that they sought to eliminate oppression with LOVE. They did not seek to eliminate the oppressors, only the oppression. They wanted to CHANGE relationships, not stop them. They saw that there is real power in community, in connection, in solidarity, and in peace. World changing power, and they all used it. Not power over, but power with.

There is the vision of the kindom, or the Beloved Community. The way of God in the world is not in power over, but power with. It is in humanizing ALL. It is in sharing abundant resources. It is in togetherness.

This, I think, is also the real meaning of the salvation discussed in Isaiah. The historical idea was of return, hope, freedom, and connection. And, when it is looked at carefully, it is clear that God is at work to move towards peace – towards wholistic well-being of all and each, towards joy – for all, towards comfort, towards freedom from oppression.

God’s dreams get spoken a little differently in each time and place, but in Isaiah and Paul, Jesus and Ghandi, Rev. Dr. King hopefully in each of us, they resonate with the same underlying melodies, hopes, and passions. God’s passion is for ALL to be WELL, together.

As you may remember, Rev. Dr. King talked about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism as “forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”3 About poverty, he said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”4

Heavens. It is even less “new” now than when he said it. The existence of poverty within our nation is a choice our nation has made about it’s values, a choice that the Bible CLEARLY disagrees with. We could house everyone, and we could do it for LESS money than it costs us NOT to house everyone, but we choose not to. We could feed everyone, and the impact on our society as a whole would be profound, but we choose not to. We could provide affordable, excellent healthcare for everyone, once again at lower costs than our current system, but we choose not to.

As Ms. Bryce Covert summarized in an NYT opinion piece entitled “There is a Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things,” this summer,

“In a seminal 2001 paper, the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote tried to answer this very question: Why doesn’t this country have a welfare system that looks like the ones in European countries, progressively taxing those with the most wealth to redistribute resources to those with the least? Economic differences, they concluded, don’t explain it. But they did find that “racial fragmentation” has played a “major role” in keeping us from these policies in a way it hasn’t elsewhere. They also found that while Europeans see the poor as members of their own group who are merely unfortunate, Americans see them as lazy “others.” American voters are less likely to demand that their leaders pass policies that help the least well-off. “Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately Black, unappealing to many voters,” they concluded.5

That is, our choices to allow people to struggle in poverty are inter-related with racism. Like Rev. Dr. King said.

The way I see it, at the center of all the evils and violence is the dehumanization of others. Which means that every SINGLE movement toward compassion is a movement away from violence, away from evil, towards the beloved community. Compassion MATTERS, for each of us, for all of us, and for the world we want to make. For the world we are making with God.

I subscribe to a newsletter from Emily Nagoski, who with her sister wrote “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” which I would put on a required reading list for humans if I had the power to make such a thing. Last week she entitled her email newsletter, “Burnout: You don’t have to Wait for the Revolution to Feel Better.”6

Her words were profound to me, and so I’m going to share them with you. She says that there are solutions to burnout, and they are neither the revolution nor self care. BUT RATHER, compassion. Speaking of society as a body, she says:

We help the body learn not to treat parts of itself as the enemy.

Just because a cell in our social body is different from us doesn’t make it “foreign” or a threat; its difference means that it plays a role in our social body that we ourselves cannot play, and so we must protect it, because our own wellbeing within this social body depends on every different cell sustaining its wellbeing. We can’t soothe the inflammation of the social body by attacking any part of it.

No, the cure for burnout can’t be some fantasy of revolution, nor is it the finger-trap of self-care. It is simply care; it is all of us turning toward each other with kindness and compassion. When we see each other’s exhaustion and overwhelm, we offer support without judgment. When we notice our own sense of inadequacy, we allow others to witness it and love us anyway. The “cure” is each of us declining to let the forces of racist, sexist, capitalist oppression stop us from loving the hell out of one other, come what may.

…

And if you’re worried I’m saying, “Don’t try to change the system; let’s just be nice to each other while the world burns,” I invite you to think bigger. Think outside the boring dynamics of Force A acting against Force B and so Force B retaliates with overwhelming power. Imagine instead Force B transforms into a cloud, saturating Force A with peace until it deliquesces and releases us into the natural, soft flow of being human.

Audre Lorde says: community built on honoring our differences. She calls us to “recognize difference as a crucial strength.” She says,

“Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community does not mean shedding our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

The cure is not “self-care.” The cure is simply care — all of us, caring for each other, by honoring our differences and loving one another because of them.

That’s it, dear ones. That’s how we do God’s work, how we build the kindom, how we live the Beloved Community, how we follow Jesus, how we continue the work of Rev. Dr. King. We love the hell out of each other, we simply care, we honor our differences and love one another. May God help us do it! Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

2General Commission on Religion and Race. https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-beloved-community

3 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

4Ibid.

5 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/racism-paid-leave-child-care.html

6 https://emilynagoski.substack.com/p/burnout-you-dont-have-to-wait-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=287493&post_id=95085447&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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May 29, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Resurrection People” based on Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 & John 17:20-26

There have been so many mass shootings. There have been so many that I suspect all of us have been touched by them not just on the news but also more directly, whether they be from afar, or from close up. My mother spent a year at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A friend went to the “other” high school – not to Columbine. Another friend grew up in the Conklin United Methodist Church, and to Susquehanna Valley Central schools. (The location of the young man who committed mass murder in Buffalo). These little connections make these deaths and the violence very, very real.

For years it seemed like the primary work of Schenectady Clergy Against Hate was to be gathering together with marginalized communities to speak to the pain of attacks against them. We got good at it. I’m still upset about that.

There isn’t much point in standing in this pulpit and decrying a lack of reasonable gun control laws – it is preaching to the choir. But also, how can one stand in this pulpit and do anything other than name the abomination that is a society that puts weapons of mass murder in the hands of those who engage in hate crimes, and those who wish to kill children. Buffalo and Uvalde. Back to back. But we all know what happened after Sandy Hook.

(Nothing.)

We live in a country that says it values the right to bear arms, but does so without providing a right to safety. We live in a country that won’t change its laws because the gun manufacturers have too strong of a lobby. We live in a country that is more invested in profits from murder than in preventing murder.

How can we do anything but grieve?

We live in a violent society, and it impacts us in so very many ways. We live in a violent society.

It breaks my heart. Sometimes it threatens to break my spirit.

But, I’m a person of faith, and so I choose to dream with you and with God about the nonviolent society that God wants for us, the beloved community that Dr. King spoke of, the kindom of God Jesus named, the true “Promised Land” of the people of God. I don’t want to give more time to violence.

Sure, I’m still going to contact my representatives and ask for changes to our gun laws. Sure, I’m still going to object to private prisons and solitary confinement and police brutality, and the like. That isn’t going to end. We can’t get from here to there without actual change.

But first and foremost, I want to follow Jesus on the path of nonviolence. I want to give my energy to how things should be. I don’t want to engage violence with violence. I want to engage the world with love.

Also, we aren’t going to get from here to there without knowing what we’re aiming at.

The text we have from John this week is as convoluted as John tends to be. But his point is that the loving community of faith is meant to be a living expression of the love of God. Jesus prays, asking that we might learn how to love. Jesus tries to place in the hearts of his followers, one more seed in hopes that it will grow: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.“ (17:26) We’re told, time and time again, that it is by loving each other in faith community that the world is changed. We start with each other.

The text from Revelation includes the very last words of the Bible, and I’m told that they’re best interpreted, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” There is a universality, a hope in both passages that the love that starts with Jesus and extends to the community of faith may become the norm in the world at large, and eventually the way the world works. We end with everyone.

For a very long time, Christianity was so profoundly peaceful that it was assumed a Christian could not fight in a war. (This changed around the time there was a desire for Crusades. Sigh.) This is still true enough that our Social Principals state, “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ.” (165.c) United Methodists are able to use our faith as the bases of being a conscientious objector in the face of a draft.

Yet, there are so many ways that violence seeps in. It seeps into our language. It seeps in to our values. It seems into our lives. At times, it seems right into our faith.

We often talk these days about “echo chambers” and the distances between people of different political parties. We bemoan the increasing partisanship of our society. Which is good, because it is dangerous.

When I need to be reminded of the power of nonviolence, and how deeply rooted it is in my faith, I go back to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Their fundamental tenet, #3: Nonviolence Seeks to Defeat Injustice, or Evil, Not People.

Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people.
The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil not persons victimized by evil.

Just saying those words reminds me that nonviolence requires great strength, and a community commitment to it. Reminding each other that those who do evil are victims and are not evil takes a faith community. I’ve often been struck by those in this community who have the patience to pray for those who do great harm, and how they guide and remind the rest of us of that need.

I have been for many years a student of “Nonviolent Communication” but if I’m honest, within that community there is a desire to change the name to “Compassionate Communication.” People do not want to define themselves AGAINST something, not even AGAINST violence, but rather FOR sometime, FOR compassion. I think they’re onto something. I think turning towards what we want the world to look like matters, even in little ways.

Our gospels tell us Jesus prayed for those who were crucified with him, and for those who crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). In the midst of dying by state-sponsored violence, Jesus offered compassion, grace, mercy, forgiveness.

That’s the one we follow.

But also, we follow the one who told us to “turn the other cheek” and this is, of course, were our faith gets really interesting. Because to “turn the other cheek” is not simply to accept violence from another passively. To turn the other cheek – because of lack of toilet paper that created a societal norm that only allowed right hands to be used in public and because of a societal norm that indicated one backhanded a subordinate and slapped an equal – was to demand equality without returning violence with violence. Similarly, Jesus’ words on the cross take back the upper hand. They take the power of forgiveness. They take the power of knowledge. In the face of violence, they offer compassion and prove it to be a potent force.

This is the 7th, and last, Sunday of Easter. This is the final time this year that our primary focus is on the Easter Story (well, kinda, every Sunday is a “little Easter” but go with me).

There are many ways to understand Jesus’s resurrection, but for today, let’s focus on this one: The greatest threat the Empire had was violence, in particular violence in the form of a horrid public death. But resurrection says violence doesn’t get the final answer, not even death gets the final answer. Resurrection says that compassion gets the final answer. Mercy gets the final answer. Peace gets the final answer. LOVE gets the final answer.

Nothing, nothing, NOTHING could stop the love of God in Jesus. Romans 8:35-39.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Violence has a lot of power. A gut wrenching, sickening, disgusting amount of power.

And yet even in the midst of mass murders, we are Easter people. Easter, exists as a response to the violence of the world. We are Resurrection People. We are people of peace, and compassion, and nonviolence. We are people who know that love wins in the end. We are people who believe our lives can be useful in bringing peace, compassion, justice, and hope to the world. We are followers of a creative, loving, compassionate Savior, who could not even be stopped by death.

We are a Resurrection People.

Lord, hear our prayers. 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

May 29, 2022

Sermons

“Meditation of My Heart” Page based on Leviticus 19:9-18 Psalm…

September 30, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What sort of world do we want to live in? What world are we trying to create? This is a central question of faith, and the answer has sacred names. It is often called the kindom of God, it is also known as the beloved community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”¹ I believe that this vision goes back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and is the the vision of the Torah itself. (The Torah is a name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.)

Today I want to look at that vision for the world, and build on it into the vision we see God seeking to build from the world as we know it today into what it could be. The vision we’ll see was one that detailed how society should be set up, specifically outlining how to to create a just system where even the vulnerable can thrive.

Not everyone sees this vision in the Hebrew Bible. Many Christians have been taught to distrust the vision of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is often interpreted into English as “the law” and that has gained disfavor in many Christian circles. Paul wrote in Romans 7, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Romans 7:6 NRSV) Those following his ideas have seen the law as old, as dated, as dead – and thus definitely not as life giving.

I think we miss a lot when we simplify that much. “The law” is a series of rules, regulations, and expectations about what it would take to develop a stable community that values human life. They’re profound, intentional, and life-giving.

The Torah vision emerges out of the core conception of the Divine in the ancient Jewish faith – that God was a God who cared about how people treated each other. God wanted the people of God to create a community where all of God’s people could survive, and thrive! This was notable in a time when most communities conceived of gods and goddesses who cared only for how humans treated the gods and goddesses – related to worship and sacrifices. Instead of a concept of God that is self-serving, the Torah vision sets out a series of rules and regulations about how humans are to treat each other, under the impression that this is what God wants from them. God is pleased when people care for each other. This is the foundation of our faith tradition, and of the Torah vision for good living.

As we see in several of the 10 commandments – don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet what your neighbor has – how neighbors get treated is central to how a stable and supportive society is formed. Of course, we also see in the 10 commandments that how God is understood matters – don’t have other gods, don’t make idols, don’t take the name of the God in vain, and even I would argue, remember the Sabbath day. These two facets coincide with the great commandments as found in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 19:18b, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” and the Shema, found in Deutoronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” On these two foundations – care for each other and love of God, ancient Israel was built.

According to John Dominic Crossan, the vision was one of distributive justice, and we see that as staring with the Sabbath. Sabbath is a distribution of rest, that applied to both Israelites, and foreigners. It applied EVERYONE, and came every week. That prevented people from being dehumanized by constant work. One day off out of seven means that there is an identity other than work. The Sabbath laws were also about distribution – distribution of rest and thus humanity! The Sabbath rules also, in a way, applied to the land. Fields were mean to lie fallow every 7 years. The Jubilee year was also an extension of Sabbath. Leviticus explains this in chapter 25:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. (Leviticus 25:8-13, NRSV)

This brings us to the the distribution of land, that land that each family returned to! Every tribe got a portion of the land and then every family got a portion of the tribe’s land. That is, every family got land on which they could live and farm. There was a careful distribution of land to enable all of the Israelites to have subsistence.

Then, there were rules and regulations to make sure that the land wouldn’t be appropriated out of the hands of the family!! One of those was the rule that loans had to be forgiven every 7 years so that debt did not accumulate. The other piece was that land could only be LEASED, as we heard in the Jubilee passage a moment ago. If a family got into financial trouble and had to sell their land, it could only be leased for up to 49 years but it could not be sold outside of the family. This meant a family could not permanently lose their basis of subsistence.

There is one exception to the land distribution though. One tribe did not get ANY land. That was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. The Levites, instead, lived off of the tithes of the other nations. The Levites were the “holy people”, from that tribe the priests were chosen. The Levites were set aside to deal with matters of the Divine. They were the moral compass of the community. The Levites were dependent on the other tribes for their survival when they otherwise had so much power, it kept them motivated to seek the well-being of the tribes because they were interdependent. It also meant that while most of society was at work farming and tending to herds, there were people pondering, considering, and attending to the big picture. It wasn’t that they were closer to God, simply that they got to spend more of their time attending to the things of God on behalf of everyone else.

The Torah vision had other safeguards in place to try to keep things just. Loans could not be given with interest. That means that there was no penalty for needing a loan. One did not go further into poverty because one was in poverty. It also means that those who were doing well enough to offer loans did not glean further wealth from it.

The was also a provision for gleaning. Those who owned land were banned from picking the edges of their fields as well as from going back to pick a second time, making sure to get it all. That way, those who didn’t have land – the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners, had a way to feed themselves by picking the leftovers. I am also under the impression that some of the work of the tithe was to feed the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners. That is, that even though the Torah tried to make sure everyone got land, there were also careful provisions for the exceptions! This is summarized in Leviticus 19, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Finally, the Bible absolutely obsesses over having a fair justice system that shows no partiality. To go back to Leviticus 19 for a concise version of this, “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15) The very concept of justice in the Torah vision is tied into the lack of partiality, neighborliness, and to God’s own nature. Almost all of those Leviticus 10 provisions end with “I am YHWH.” God’s own being requires this care of people, and this care of people is what builds a society that reflects God’s own being!!

Of course, ancient Israel often failed to live into the Torah vision. That’s why we have so many prophetic books filled with prophets calling kings and the powerful into compliance with the care of the vulnerable and justice for all!

Now, I do not wish to live in a theocracy, I think they tend to go poorly. But, I think there is a whole lot in the Torah vision that is worth considering and pondering. I don’t see a whole lot of justice in our society, and I do see a LOT of partiality. Starting with where we are today, what do we see God at work trying to create? How is God seeing to make sure all people have sustenance? How is God at work to make justice systems just and fair? How is God trying to ensure the vulnerable are cared for and that those who have experienced oppression or harm are heard? I believe we can hear this work of God, if we listen for it; and see this work of God, if our eyes are open.

Psalm 19 celebrates the vision of the Torah, it celebrates the Torah itself! It is beautiful, isn’t it? It calls the Torah a source of reviving the soul, and wisdom, and clarity. It says the Torah is sweeter than honey and better that gold! It thinks this communal living that attempts to reflect God’s love of God’s people is THAT good! What delight is there in envisioning a society, a WORLD, where all are cared for?

The Torah-vision, the kindom of God, the beloved community, they are different ways of saying the same thing. So too, I believe, is the often repeated quote from Rev. Dr. J. Edward Carothers, teaching of the church existing to “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in ever widening circles of concern.” Just so, the Psalmist says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” As people of faith, we are called into these visions – to see them, to dream them, to move towards them, to celebrate them as they come into being, and work towards them. Sometimes the biggest work of all is to dream big enough for God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Martin Luther King Jr. 1957, found at http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html. Accessed on 9/27/28.

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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