Vulnerability

January 5, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Vulnerability” – 2024 Christmas Dawn Meditation

A lot of theologians like to make a big fuss over Jesus being born a baby. Or, really, over God being born a baby. They talk about infinity becoming finite, about spirit taking on flesh and mortality, about the God of all becoming embodied – and as a tiny baby at that. My conceptions of who Jesus was don’t entirely jive with this, but…

It is, in fact, rather awe-inspiring to think of Jesus as a baby. In most of the gospel narratives he is a grown man with profound insight, incredible spirituality, and unusual wisdom. While he didn’t possess much power in the ways of the world – he was poor, homeless, and peace-able – he had a lot of the other kinds of power. He was well liked, even loved, by many. He had followers who trusted him, supporters who enabled him, and the kind of faith that can move mountains. His was the power of Love, but he had it in spades, and we are people who believe in the epic power of Love.

But as a baby, he was fully vulnerable. I have been reminded of this, this year, this second time I’ve picked up a newborn and been responsible for keeping him alive. Babies are 100% dependent on others. They can’t eat without help, they need others to change their diapers. They often need to be soothed to sleep, or reminded to wake up. And all that is when everything goes RIGHT.

The funny thing though, is that we’re more like babies than we’d like to admit. We, too, are 100% dependent on others. We can’t eat without the supply chain enabling food to get to our tables. We can’t excrete safely without the work others did on our septic lines. Many of us also need to be soothed to sleep and nearly all of us need alarms to remind us to wake up.

And that’s, too, when everything goes right. Because it turns out that being in these finite, mortal, human bodies is ripe with things going wrong. Injury and illnesses plague us. Abilities come and go, and dis-abilities ebb and flow in the opposite direction.

We are so profoundly vulnerable in these bodies of ours.

Many years ago, while serving as an intern hospital chaplain, I had the honor of getting to know a man who was being treated for very serious cancer. He was in isolation even within in the cancer unit because treatment required the complete dismantling of his immune system. (Sadly, this happens more frequently than we’d like to discuss.) His family was too far away to visit, and he was bored and scared. Also, being sick didn’t fit his identity. He was, as he said, “a bouncer in the seediest bar in the city.” He wasn’t supposed to get SICK.

Bodies. Are. So. Vulnerable.

And nothing we do, nothing we say, nothing we imagine can keep them safe negates their vulnerability.

We’re all dependent on each other, we’re all in bodies that can’t fully be trusted… we’re all a lot like that baby placed in the manger – and a whole lot MORE like that baby than I think we’d like to be.

And, in case you hadn’t heard it or forgot about it, the mangers at that time were hewn out of the bedrock. To place a baby in a manger was to put the baby BELOW floor level, where anyone could step on him or trip over him in addition to the animals feeding around him. It is a profound metaphor to think of that level of vulnerability for that new baby, one that makes me squirm a little.

Confession, when Isaiah was born I was utterly horrified at the idea of putting him down on his first night on earth, and simply refused to sleep because in my mind he HAD to be held. The nurse – wise woman that she was – responded to me that I HAD to sleep if I was going to recover from the c-section. My best friend, therefore, held Isaiah for his whole first night, so I would sleep without the horror of him being… gasp… in safe bassinet in a hospital. I may resonate a little too much with the concept of placing a baby in a manger! I think that’s a hard no.

I think we can take from this Christmas story, and from human life in general, that vulnerability is holy. We may not like it, we may ABSOLUTELY HATE IT, but it is holy. In our vulnerability we are bound to each other by our needs, in our vulnerability we become more open to the Divine, in our vulnerability we learn again and again that God is with us, in our vulnerability we see how little control we have… and hopefully make some peace with it.

The angels sang, the shepherd came, Mary pondered it all in her heart – a baby was born, as vulnerable as any of us, and it was good. So, too, are our fragile, vulnerable existences. It is HOLY to be vulnerable. May God help us. Amen

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

December 25, 2024

Uncategorized

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

December 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But for now, Phew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 25, 2022

Sermons

Christmas Dawn Meditation

December 25, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I know its early, and I know it is Christmas, so I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to say this, but I’m really sick of this story. By my rough estimations I’ve read it about 500 times, and maybe 100 of those out-loud. It isn’t really that good. Frankly, of the whole story we’re given only 2 verses that really have anything to do with Jesus being born and they’re pretty anticlimactic. But, again, I know it is early and I know it is Christmas and none of you got out of bed this morning to hear me whine about the Lukan birth narrative. I’m not sure any of you got out of bed to listen to me do exegesis either, but oh well 😉 As sick as I am of this story, these 14 verses still have surprises left in them. This year it is the geography that jumped out at me. It is only in the past few years that I’ve really understood Galilee and Judea. To be direct about it, Judea, the Southern Kingdom, that came back from exile in 538 BCE was the land of the “Jews.” That is, the word Jew comes from Judah who was the primary ancestor of the Southern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom – Israel – which went into exile first in 722 BCE, never returned. The “10 lost tribes” did not regain their previous existence as a country. This tends to become relevant when we’re talking about the Good Samaritan or the Samaritan Woman at the well, because the Samaritans were the hated Northern neighbors of Judea, the place where people who had once been followers of the same God had deviated and intermarried and not got it all WRONG.

The weird thing is that Galilee is NORTH of Samaria. So all the things that we say about Samaria should be true of Galilee. Galilee should be an area of outcasts who don’t follow God correctly, but it isn’t! The difference was a policital one.
Judean leaders decided to colonize Galilee as an outpost of Jewish thought and culture, and they had! The Galilean backwater was an experiment in exporting the “true faith” of the Judeans up into the north. The three areas were then very different. Judea with Jerusalem – and Bethlehem – was the center of Jewish life. Samaria, directly to the north, was distinct enemy territory (which is really dumb since the Empire was the real problem, but that’s how humans work, right?). To the north of Samaria was Galilee, the backwater colony of Jewish thought and life, a place to go if your family couldn’t make it in Judea.
Mary and Joseph were from Nazarath, a TINY town in Galilee. Jesus was from Nazareth. It is one of the few facts about Jesus that can be even a little bit historically validified. Jesus, the Nazarean – that’s how he was KNOWN.
And yet both Matthew and Luke go through great pains to explain how Jesus – known as a Nazarene – was ACTUALLY born in Bethlehem. They come up with two very different answers. Matthew suggests that the family was originally from Bethlehem but after the Magi left, Joseph had a dream and they went off to Egypt to hide away for a few years and then when they moved back they moved to Nazareth. Luke comes up with the census narrative, which is cute, but has no historical basis. And even if there was a census, NO census makes you go to the land of your ancestors. EVERY country wants you to register according to where you live (and pay taxes.)
But David was born in Bethlehem, and David was the great king. The awaited Messiah was supposed to be a New David. And the Gospel writers wanted to make their points abundantly clear. The new King was, also, like David, born in Bethlehem. It is where Jacob’s wife Rachel died. It is where Ruth the Moabite settled. The great kingS were born there.

Bethlehem is a 100 mile walk from Nazareth, and that’s without the struggle of getting around Samaria. Bethlehem is near enough to Jerusalem (about 17 miles). Jesus, whose ministry centered around the Galilean backwater, is said to be born and die in the same places as King David.

If the Gospel writers do so much creative work to connect Jesus to David, there must be theological significance for them in it. Luke also does a lot of work to place Jesus in the political context of the day. Throughout the first two chapters Luke reminds us again and again who the power players were in the Empire. This poor boy was born into a world that already had rich, famous, and extraordinarily powerful men in it. And he was born in the city of the King.

And then, Luke, tells us that the announcement of the birth of Jesus was made the SHEPHERDS. Shepherds were despised at the time of Jesus, they were seen as thieves of a sort – because they were always grazing their sheep on other people’s land. (Which happens when all the land is privately owned.) They were USELESS. But after telling us about the Men who Ran the Empire, after doing all that work to put Jesus in Bethlehem, Luke goes on to describe in explicit detail an interaction between the angels of God and the shepherds up in the hills.

Now, to be fair, David was a shepherd. So maybe Luke was just going over his point again. The more I study Luke, the more I can believe it. Of all the Gospel writers, he is the smartest and the best story teller. He’d weave something like that in on purpose. But he also choose to talk about shepherds. Matthew talks about Magi. Luke’s shepherds IMMEDIATELY differentiate the sort of King that Jesus is going to be.

He’s born in the City of David. He’ll ride triumphant into Jerusalem and die there like David did. But his kingship isn’t going to look anything like David’s. He isn’t going to take the throne. He isn’t going to lead an army. He isn’t going to go through political machinations to increase his power. Jesus is going to be the one who pays attention to the poor, the sick, the women and children, the powerless, the refugees, and gives them ways to help each other. He is going to call the powerful away from their power. He is going turn the world upside down, and wash his disciples’ feet, and change what even power means. He’s the son of a backwater carpenter and a teenage mother. And while we’ve all but forgotten the other great man whose names appear in his birth story – other than their appearance in his birth story – we’re still getting out of bed before Dawn to celebrate the wonder of the one who brought peace to earth and purpose to our lives. Born in the City of David, but from Nazareth. Isn’t that everything all at once? Jesus wasn’t a part of the power structure of Judea, but he changed the world more than any of them did. All the contrasts, conflicts and wonders of Jesus! Isn’t it great? Merry Christmas! Amen

–

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

December 25, 2015