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February 5, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Welcoming…Enemies?” based on Isaiah 16:1-5

The Bible doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about the Moabites. It does suggest that the Moabites were cousins of sorts of the Israelites, claiming that their patriarch was Lot, the son of Abraham. However, if you remember that story, the basic suggestion is that Lot’s line lived on because his daughter got him drunk and got pregnant off of him, which is not the sort of origin story one tells about a group of people you like.

To quote the Encyclopedia Britannica “The Moabite language differed only dialectally from Hebrew, and Moabite religion and culture were very closely related to those of the Israelites. Nevertheless, Moabites were excluded from the Jewish community (Deuteronomy 23:3–6), where the name Moab became a typical denomination for the enemies of God (Isaiah 25:10).”1

Right, so the Moabites were sort of the old-school version of the Samaritans – close cousins, deeply hated, enough so that Moabite was the synonym for enemy.

And into that reality comes the Isaiah reading today. We’ve been working from “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” and translated Dr. Wilda Gafney makes an intentional choice to translate Zion and Jerusalem in the feminine (as they are in Hebrew). To make clear to the English speaker the constancy of the feminine, she “reproduces ‘daughter in places where English masks the frequency of the feminine address.”2 That has resulted in a lot of “daughters” in our recent readings, which may – in this case – create some confusion for those who heard the text today. So, let me clarify. In the New Revised Standard Version of this Isaiah passage, the translators tell “daughter Zion” to care for the “daughters of Moab.”

As Dr. Gafney says, ‘God calls on her daughter, Zion, Jerusalem to welcome her Moabite sisters in their time of need. Israel’s relationship with her border states was perpetually tumultuous even with shared ties… Often in the Hebrew Scriptures foreign women are treated as prospective danger, irresistible to Israelite men through sexual wiles, leading to Israelite men straying from their God. But in Isaiah 16, God calls on Israel to care for these vulnerable women.“3

The Bible has pretty much nothing nice to say about the Moabites, but when they are struggling and in danger, the people are told to shelter them, really, to save them. That’s so far beyond "love your enemies so God will judge and drop heaping coals on their heads” (thanks Paul) and sounds more like “love your enemies because they’re beloved of God too, and worthy humans at that.” These were the people the Israelites were at war with, more often than not. And they’re told to welcome them, shelter them, and keep them safe.

There is, you may remember, another place where the Bible has something rather nice to say about the Moabites, which is that Ruth was one and she was pretty great. This is a thing I love about the Bible. It is unable to sit tight with violence and hatred, it just can’t keep God’s love from seeping in, even with the ones it struggles with the most. As anyone who has ever attempted to explain the Good Samaritan parable knows, you have start with explaining the enmity between the Israelites and the Samaritans to get to the point of the Samaritan being the hero. Or, after the HORRIBLE defeat of Jerusalem by Babylon, the exiles are told to seek the good of the city of Babylon.

The Bible doesn’t make peace with hatred. There is always light shining through. As much as the people struggle with each other, God’s love for all can’t ever be extinguished. And, truly, I think the people tried. Their own grief, fear, and anger created enormous blinders to the humanity of the outsiders, the enemies. But, God’s work to transform it is ALSO always there, and nudging away the blinders to see the beloveds of God underneath.

Now, I believe the commandment by Jesus to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you” is well known. But I think maybe we don’t spend enough time talking about the skill sets necessary to do so. This week I picked up a book by my favorite seminary professor, Andrew Dreitcer. The book is entitled, “Living Compassionately: Loving Like Jesus” and in the introduction I found myself remembering why he was my favorite professor. He talked about his own struggles with loving his enemies, and trying SO SO HARD to love people, only to discover that telling himself he should wasn’t the same as actually doing so. He said, “The constant efforts to manufacture acts of love because my faith demands it – even when I don’t feel loving – may lead me to a sense of guilty inadequacy, or a sense of failure, or ultimately to burnout.”4 The HONESTY of that was such a relief.

But, he also didn’t leave it there. He acknowledged it, and then came around to, “The heart of the Christian path of love – radical compassion- can be taught.”5 Then he spends the rest of the book teaching it.

In recent years, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked has been about how to remain connected to people on the other side of the political spectrum. This is a WONDERFUL question. This is a loving question. This is also a REAL question. We may know that politics are just politics, and that outsiders are trying to divide us, and that people matter more than their stances on some issues, but at the same time the mostly deeply held beliefs we have about what the world looks like and what it should look like are often in contrast to what people believe on the “other side” of that spectrum. And in cases of the violation of our most dearly held values and beliefs, it is truly a challenge to find shared humanity.

So, I’ve really appreciated that people acknowledge how hard it is and try to do it anyway. And I’ve offered some answers and suggestions to those who have asked, potentially even something vaguely helpful if I’m lucky. I’ve suggested listening for other people’s values and digging in deep until the similarities of desires can be found – even if the solutions on top of them aren’t shared. I have suggested acknowledging that others are struggling and make space for that struggle, particularly for the fear that is so prevalent in our society.

But between this Isaiah passage about sheltering one’s enemies and the book on compassion, my answers sound weak to my own ears. I wish now I had started by offering people compassion for the struggle they brought to me, and in doing so modeled the compassion that I think we need for such work. Dr. Dreitcer reminded me that from my own faith position, compassion flows three ways between God, other, and self, and that when we are struggling to offer compassion to another, we may first need to make space to experience God’s compassion for us, and/or to have compassion for ourselves first. We can’t browbeat compassion out of ourselves, or pick it up from bootstraps. And then, I wish I had reminded myself and others that by offering vulnerability we make space for the sort of intimacy we want with others. If the goal is to remain in contact with people we care about, then there are skill sets for that too.

Now, I suspect you’d like the easy fix on how to be more compassionate, and I sort of want to give it to you, but it isn’t an easy fix. It is the stuff of long regular practice, of starts and stops, of learning by doing, of taking time for what matters. It is the stuff of good spiritual practice. Dr. Dreitcer recommends intentional spiritual practices focused on intention, attention, awareness, intimacy, imagination, and feelings. (Yeah, just that!) I offer that we are blessed with new committees working on relationships and on spiritual formation, and the work of the groups will continue to offer to all of us the means of developing our compassion so that the actual practice of loving our enemies, or maybe just those who really exhaust us.

I think this is all good news. That God doesn’t want us to stay in enmity with others, and that there are ACTUAL ways to build compassion so we don’t have to just feel guilty when we aren’t as loving as we want. It is all good news. And we can work on it together. And it is good to be a faith community where that’s part of what we’re trying to do together. We are in this together. May God help us along our way. Amen

1 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moabite

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 50.

3Gafney, 53.

4Andrew Dreitcer, Living Compassionately: Loving Like Jesus (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2017), 12.

5Dreitcer, 13.

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 5, 2023

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Untitled

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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“Are We Lost?” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

In
simpler times I have heard the parables of the lost coin and the lost
sheep in simpler ways. One can take the perspective of the 99 sheep
or the 9 coins and be rather irked at the ways the 1 is celebrated.
One can take the perspective of the seeker, and join in the joy of
finding the one. One can take the perspective of the outside
observer and wonder if leaving 99 sheep unattended is really the best
way to move towards having 100 sheep, or if throwing a party worth
more than the found coin is the best use of money.

Of
course, there is the most obvious option of taking the perspective of
the lost sheep and being grateful for the shepherd who comes looking
and rescues one from peril (or perhaps pulls you out of a great
tasting meadow, who knows?) Identifying with the sheep is a little
easier than the coin, but nevertheless, the awareness that when we’re
lost we need help is an easy one to turn to.

These
times, beloveds, are not simple times.

In
this time when I read the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin I
think to myself, “are we lost or found?” and I find that the
answer is “I don’t know.” Or, more honestly, the answer is “Yes,
we are lost. Yes, we are found. Yes.”

I
remember preaching in 2016 about the articles I was seeing about how
the 2016 election cycle was doing heavy damage to our country’s
mental health, and therapists were urging people to engage in breaks
from the news, in meditation, in breathing exercises. They were
worried about the stress destabilizing us individually and
collectively. I remember seeing what they were talking about, in
myself and in this church. Tempers were shorter, nuance got lost,
there was more right/wrong and us/them thinking. Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate grew out of that the time, because of the radical
increase in hate crimes.

Here
is the bad news. At this point I think of 2016 as a simpler time.

Sure,
there were oodles of stress. Sure I saw myself, others, and the
church community get worse at basic functioning. Sure, The United
Methodist Church was a dumpster fire. Sure, polarization was at all
time highs. But, that level of communal chronic stress was at that
point relatively new. (We didn’t know it then.)

For
me, the Trump presidency was a daily kick in the gut, or more
specifically in every value I hold dear. And, because I’m not
actually interested in dismissing people because they think
differently from me, I’m aware that for those whose values were
upheld by the Trump presidency, the squeals of horror and outrage
about everything he did ALSO shook them to the core. And, let us
never forget, that foreign adversaries have taken advantage of
differences between us to further polarization, because it benefits
THEM for us to have more HATE in our society.

So,
the stress of the election didn’t settle down. Things kept getting
worse. Then there was the 2019 General Conference of The United
Methodist Church when our denomination doubled down on homophobia and
it became clear that our church at large is not centered in the love
of God. That was a blow, at least to me.

Then
the COVID pandemic began, and we’re sure sick of talking about it,
not to mention living it, I know. But it is relevant here. The
pandemic shook every single part of our society and our lives. And
nothing is the same.

And
quite often we HATE that. Fine, quite often I hate that. It is
disconcerting. It is depressing. It is overwhelming. And then
there are the STILL present challenges of determining where the right
balances are between risks of infecting others with a serious illness
and risks of disconnection and loneliness (which itself can also be
deadly), and the simple deciding is exhausting.

The
stress level has been rising since 2016, sometimes just a slow steady
beat upwards, sometimes in leaps. There are PHYSIOLOGICAL facts
about stress. It makes us less creative. It makes us less
compassionate. It pushes us into black and white thinking. It leads
us into in-group thinking, and making enemies of others. It makes us
selfish.

None
of which look anything like following Jesus. Right?

That’s
a little squirmy for me. That the impacts of stress impede the
capacity to follow Jesus. Because I don’t really get to control
the world and the stresses it throws at me, nor at us. All
of which gets me around to why I think the answer is “yes, we’re
lost.”

But
perhaps you’d like to hear why I think the answer is ALSO, “yes,
we’re found?”

The
starting and ending point of “we’re found’ are quite simple: I do
not believe it is possible to wander away from God. Or, at least, it
is not possible to wander beyond the reaches of God’s love. And, as
God is everywhere, anywhere we are is with God, and God knows where
we are, so we are found. (By God.)

But,
in case that isn’t actually enough for you (although, it is rather a
lot), I’d like to point out what you are doing RIGHT NOW. You are
listening to a sermon. Now, I don’t know all of your personal
reasons for why you do that, but I know some things. I know you have
lots of other things you could be doing, and when you do this you are
making a choice. There seems to be strong evidence that you would
listen to a sermon because you are interested in what makes a good
life and/or in how to live a Godly life and/or in considering how to
get from the world as it is to the world as God would have it be. It
could be you are looking for reasons for hope, or looking for
analysis of what’s going on, or to make meaning of the world, or to
make meaning of life, or maybe you are mostly doing this because
other people you like also do this and you want to connect with them.

Those,
dear ones, are really beautiful reasons to do a thing.

I
remain shocked that this thing we know as church exists. Hear me
out! So, a bunch of people connect with each other and are connected
by their shared commitment to God and living as followers of Jesus.
So they create spaces to work together and worship together. They
give significant gifts of time to caring for the needs of the church
and the community, to learning together and playing together and
doing important things together.

Then,
and this is the one that keeps on shocking me, they give MONEY to the
church. Enough to PAY STAFF even (AND take care of the building,
another miracle). Staff to help take care of the resources (sexton,
building), staff to take care of the community (breakfast cook),
staff to take care of the communication and connections
(administrative assistant), and even staff to take the time to listen
to the world and the Bible and the people and try to help make sense
of things (pastor.)

I
am amazed that you all do this. It is INSANE.

You
realize how much time, energy, money, and frustration you’ve given to
this place right? When people say “church family” they may in
fact be reflecting that some of the demands family puts on our lives
is similar to the demands church puts on their lives.

But
this is also GOOD NEWS. Because in the midst of this world, people
are giving of themselves in hope that what we do together is part of
building better lives and a better world. Lives are changed here, by
friendship, by theology, by study, by singing, by hope. We are more
together than we could ever be apart.

And
even now, even when everything is different, even when showing up is
in multiple mediums and often feels SO strange compared to what we
knew in the past – even now, you all keep on caring enough to
listen, to try, to work towards good. And that’s about as “found”
as I can imagine existing. I am, quite honestly, profoundly moved
that you exist and keep on keeping on.

There
is a final piece to this though. It isn’t just that we are lost and
we are found, as two separate pieces. It is also that we are lost
and found, both at the same time, and that has its own truth. This
week I got an email from a clergy coach who talked about this, and
while I want to share everything Rev. Lauren Stephens-Reed said, I’m
condensing to this:

leading
innovation is about getting people to co-create the future with you.
This
kind of approach is warranted when your purpose is clear but the
future is not. Is there any better descriptor of – any greater need
in – this time in the Church, in the world?

I
do believe our purpose is clear. We are co-creating the kindom of
God with God. We work together to promote the idea that the kindom
and its values are important, to help each other learn in order to
build the kindom, and to help each other live its values. We don’t
know everything, but we do know that some of the prime values of the
kindom are love, justice, compassion, and inclusion, so we work on
those. We are going it TOGETHER because we believe we are more
together than apart.

So,
we don’t know how to get to the future.

That’s
OK.

God
does, and God will lead us, TOGETHER.

We
are lost dear ones, and we are found, dear ones. And it is hard but
it is OK. Thanks be to God. 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

September 11, 2022

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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

Uncategorized

“Rainbows and Rain” based on Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark…

February 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

When
do you look for rainbows? After it rains, right? The Genesis story
connects the rainbow with God’s promise not to flood the earth –
again. It is an oddly timed symbol for such a promise, because by
the time it stops raining and the rainbow shows up … it has stopped
raining and the fear of flooding is likely already relieved.

Or,
maybe that’s the beauty of it.

Because
during a rainstorm we can anticipate it. “When this is over, we
can look for a rainbow!” So, even during the storm, we anticipate
it’s ending and the reminder that all will be well.

Of
course, in these days of climate changed by humans, rain can be
rather scary at times. Floods come more often, and more destructive
than usual. But that actually fits. The ancient Israelites were
desert people and deserts have weird relationships with rain. That
is, they need water for life, and have less of it than most, but
because the earth is so parched most of the time, and water tends to
come in deluges rather than sprinkles, heavy rainstorms quickly lead
to flash flooding.

The
ancient Israelites may have had some of our current misgivings about
torrential rain, and this story may have been a way to center in the
midst of their fears. While it rains, you can anticipate God’s
promise. When it is pouring, you start preparing for God’s sign of
hope.

While
I believe that the rainbow became a symbol for LGBTQIA pride because
of the diversity of colors representing celebrating the diverse ways
of being, I have always appreciated this anticipatory hope aspect of
it as well. The choice of the rainbow symbol, to those aware of this
Genesis story, is a choice to say, “things aren’t good now, but
they’re gonna be.”

Or,
in the language of the African American church tradition, “God is
the one who makes a way out of no way.” (I’m so thankful for the
creation of pride flags that intentionally include people of color as
well as the trans community in the beauty of human diversity.)

Dear
ones, the rainbow feels like a good symbol in the midst of our
current “Rainstorm”, doesn’t it? Or perhaps you want to call it
a monsoon. Your choice. 😉

Which,
come to think of it, is also the Jesus narrative, and our gospel
lesson today. So much of what happens in the story assumes a greater
knowledge of the time of Mark and Jesus than we generally have, so
let me retell the story with some context put in:

“In those days, Jesus came
from Nazareth (Nowhereville) of Galilee (sketchy!) – leaving behind
his family, friends, and village – everything he knew, everything
he was. He was baptized by John – a rural Holy Man, in the River
Jordan, the traditional waters for the Ancient Jewish People.
Baptism marked Jesus as a student of John’s, it also symbolized his
choice to leave behind his society and culture and obligations, and
follow only the Divine.

As he was coming out of the
water, he had a God-experience, a rather beautiful one. It was as if
the heavens were torn open and God was more accessible, and the
Spirit came right there to be with him. Jesus heard a voice offering
a blessing, claiming him! “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” In such a way, he who had left his kin
was adopted into God’s family.

After such a profound blessing
though, the Spirit of God send Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus did
not choose it, the wilderness is the place where it is hard to
sustain life, and he was alone, and he struggled, and he was tempted,
and he had to figure out what it would mean for his life to be a
Holy Man too. He was there for 40 days, like Moses was awaiting an
audience with God. With God’s help – again proving Jesus as God’s
kin – Jesus made it through.

When he came back out of the
wilderness, his teacher John had been arrested. He was on his own as
a Holy Man. He went back to Galilee, that suspicious place he was
from, and started speaking God’s ‘good news.’ Which didn’t sound
exactly like people expected it to. He said, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good
news.’”¹

That
“good news” seems to require a little bit more examination. One
scholar points out, “’Gospel’ was most commonly used in antiquity
to announce benefits to the populace.”²
Another summarizes what Jesus says with, “He boldly announces that
the reign of God – with its dreams of justice and love, equality
and abundance, wholeness and unity- is dawning.”³

Jesus
is a rainbow.

He
is a sign of hope, in the midst of the storm. He comes out of
nowhere, is claimed by God, and offers a message of hope and promise.
The world with its power hierarchies, the world that counts some
people as “disposable”, the world where economies exist to let
rich people get richer on the labor of the poor, the world that wants
to appropriate religion to support the powerful, the world that tells
the 99% to fight each other for the scraps left over after the 1%
have been fed, the world which says to take care of yourself and your
own first and let other’s fend for themselves – the WORLD’s powers
are at an end. A new reign is coming, and it will look entirely
different.

In
God’s kindom, there is no hierarchy, everyone is working toward for
the common good. In God’s kindom there are no disposable people, all
are treated as beloved children of God. In God’s kindom, there are
neither rich nor poor. Instead, each person offers their gifts and
labor for the betterment of the whole, and resources are distributed
according to need. In God’s kindom, we all treat each other as
“insiders” and work for each other’s well-being as well as our
own.

To
repent is to let go of the fear, the competitiveness, and the
judgements of the WORLD, and allow the love, the hope, and the
compassion of the kindom to take root.

This
isn’t easy. It never has been. Nor is it now. Judgements are hard
to let go of, including judgements of ourselves. They’re extra hard
in matters of life and death, like vaccines, and access to health
care, and decisions about masking and distancing and schooling and
childcare and caution vs. risk these days. Right? The issue is that
these judgments slip far too easily into shame, including self-shame
from people who have gotten COVID, which IS blaming victims.

I
don’t claim the authority to know about the best vaccine distribution
plan, but I do think it is useful to take a kindom look at our
pandemic lives. What does it look like when we look from love, hope,
and compassion?

From
that angle, I see a lot of gratitude: for the ways people have
adapted to make all of us healthier, for creativity and hard work in
trying to keep things going as they need to, for those offering care
or services even when there is risk to self involved.

I
also see more clearly the injustices of the moment: that not all
“frontline workers” have had a choice about if they want to be in
the frontlines at all, and that far too many people are forced by
economic circumstances to take risks they don’t want to take. That
people of color have been impacted in a multiplicity of ways: with
less access to adequate housing, with more people doing “essential
work”, with less access to protective gear, with higher poverty
rates that require taking greater risks, with less access to health
care, and with less responsive health care when it is accessed. (To
name a few.) Each of these systemic pieces of racism in our society
are highlighted by the higher infection rates and higher death rates
among people of color, and show us yet again the impact of disparity
on people’s very lives. Lack of equity kills, and movements from the
world-as-it-is to the World-as-God-would-have-it-be are movements
from death to life.

Looking
at the pandemic from the kindom view, mostly, I’m overwhelmed with
compassion: for the impossible decisions everyone is making to the
best of their ability; for the dehumanizing isolation so many are
living with; to the life-draining balancing acts being asked of
mothers, fathers, and caregivers. From this view, judgements
lighten, and love grows.

Finally,
the kindom view reminds us that we are no stronger than our “weakest
link.” That is, we are unable to be healthy in isolation. Until
the WORLD is vaccinated, all of us are at risk. And that’s always
been true, but now we can see it clearly.

We’re
all in this together. We’re all in this storm together (although it
impacts us differently.) And from the midst of this storm, we’re all
reminded that at the end of the storm, the rainbow comes. God
doesn’t abandon us in the storm, hope doesn’t die, the kindom is at
hand, repent and believe. Entering into the kindom’s values will
help kindom come. Remembering the rainbow helps us live through the
storm. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Summary
influenced by:

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, ~128.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L.
Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 146-7.

Debie
Thomas, “Beasts and Angels”
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2924-beasts-and-angels
2-14-21, accessed 2-18-21.

2Malina
and Rohrbaugh, 148.

3Myers,
91.

February 21, 2021

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

Uncategorized

“Compassion” based on Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25:31-46

November 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Hello
dear ones.

While
I desperately miss the chance to be present with you in worship and
embodied conversation, I am so grateful for this chance to speak and
for your willingness to listen. I hope that the Divine Spirit will
bless this message both in my speaking and in your hearing so that
space may be made for compassion and grace to grow in you and in me.

I
am speaking to you after a break! For this first time in 2020, I
took a FULL week of vacation! (Thanks to all whose work made that
possible) Despite my own admonitions about refreshing the news, it
wasn’t the MOST relaxing vacation I’ve ever had. Then, I spent 3
days on retreat. Well, virtual retreat, but retreat none-the-less
(thanks to all who made THAT possible too.) The retreat is a series
aimed at clergy, and focused on deep listening. By making space to
listen to each other space to be heard, we trust that the Spirit will
be able to be seen more clearly.

After
the retreat I am feeling refreshed, renewed, and grateful. And…
almost strong enough to tackle this Gospel lesson 😉

This
gospel lesson gets my heckles up, because I don’t like talk of hell,
I don’t like threats presented as God’s, and I don’t like binary
splits between people as if some are good and some are bad when we’re
all just complicated.

And
yet, I do like the means by which the judgement is made –
the care of the vulnerable. Which means my whole relationship with
this text is complicated. In the “Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels” Bruce Malina and Richard Rorhbaugh say, “The
basis for the division here is a person’s compassionate action toward
the weak and the poor. Its condemnation of the refusal of those able
to help people who are in need is nearly complete.”¹

God
calls us to compassion for those who disempowered: the hungry, the
thirsty, the stranger (or foreigner), the naked, the sick, the
imprisoned. Those are according to Matthew. Ezekiel mentions the
lost, the injured, those who have strayed, and the weak. In Ezekiel,
God will care directly for the sheep so that the lean are able to
become healthy, and the strong and fat are no longer able to oppress.

This
all reminds me of mercy – that word that gets used for God so often
it isn’t even heard anymore. Mercy is “compassion
or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to
punish or harm.”²
Similarly, the compassion being asked for in these texts is not
generic compassion. Rather it is compassionate ACTION towards those
who need it most.

It
is good to be kind and compassionate towards one’s peers, or those
with more power and influence than one has, but the judgement named
here isn’t on that. It is about compassion to those who have LESS
power and influence, and more need. (Although, intersectional
justice reminds us that power, influence, privilege and need are
complicated and multifaceted.)

As
I think these admonitions to be compassionate towards those who have
been disempowered is CORE to the Bible as well as to God’s desires
for a just world, the question of how to build up our compassion
muscles becomes really key!

For
me, at least, compassion starts with God’s compassion. That is the
foundation for EVERYTHING. Rather than starting with judgement or at
attempt to be worthy, my faith starts with the grace, love, and
compassion of God that I can trust in. It changes how I see myself,
as well as how I see others. It helps me be more gentle with myself
as well as more humble. It challenges me to be better, but lets me
find peace with myself as I am.

To
keep on learning those lessons requires reconnecting with the Divine,
and the Divine’s compassionate gaze. Prayer, spiritual exercise, or
simply letting myself BE without trying to DO anything more than be
all let me soak in God’s compassion and let it transform me once
again.

The
second piece is related to the first. To become a more compassionate
person requires compassion WITH MYSELF. This is actually the hardest
of the three I think. This also starts with prayer, but also
requires self-examination, and feedback from others. This, I
suspect, is a lifelong journey.

The
third piece of building compassion is the one we usually jump right
to: compassion for others. However, I really think it develops
naturally and effortlessly once we work on connecting with our
Compassionate God and allowing self-compassion. It turns out that
most of the judgments we put on others and the world are really our
judgements on ourselves externalized.

The
world needs more compassionate people, because the world needs to
become more compassionate. The irony is that the way we get there is
so indirect! To transform the world first requires allowing God’s
compassion to continually transform us.

During
this time of pandemic, when everything is different from what we’ve
known, we still have the capacity to work on our compassion. And
based on everything I’ve seen, the world is in desperate need of it
AND God has it in abundance.

May
we become stronger in our compassion, through God’s. Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 25”

2Apple
Dictionary.

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

November 15, 2020

Uncategorized

“Love” based on Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 and Matthew 22:34-46

October 25, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’ll
admit it. I haven’t been thinking much about the long game. I’m
very much in the present and the near future… the time frame
between NOW and the “end” of the pandemic (whatever that means)
and maybe the first few weeks to months afterwards. Part of this is
the depth of unknowing – what will life look like “after”?
What does “after” mean? When will “after” come, and how?

But
also, I think I haven’t been thinking about the long game because the
present and the near future are overwhelming and I sort of forgot
that there IS a long game. That is, until I read the Psalm and it
felt like standing in a big field in the middle of no where watching
the stars come out at night. (I forgot about that too. There are
too many lights in the city, and travel is too hard with a pandemic
and a baby.)

The
Psalmist says to God, “For a thousand years in your sight are like
yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.” And it
is perspective, like seeing how SMALL we are in comparison to the
night sky, except in this case even better because the time warp
we’ve been in since March (or longer) is put in perspective too.

This
too shall pass.

It
is incomprehensibly bad, and incredibly hard, and not to be
trivialized.

But,
this too shall pass.

There
still IS a long game out there, and God is still playing it.

That
helps me breathe a little deeper.

God
is still working on the kin-dom, because God never stops working on
the kin-dom. Despite all the intersecting crises of this moment, God
keeps working towards a world of abundance, of fair distribution, of
love. And God WILL WIN, no matter the set back.

In
the midst of this remembering to breathe a little deeper and take
some of my fears for the moment and remember that God is playing a
long game, Jenna posted this image on Facebook of my very favorite
place on earth.

This
image also helps me feel the way the Psalm does, with “For a
thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or
like a watch in the night.” It puts my fears, as well as my
frustrations and my hopes, into context. There is so much beauty and
there is so much peace, EVEN NOW.

The
Gospel also serves as a much needed reminder speaking into these
difficult days. The teaching here isn’t unique to Jesus, or to
Christianity. Rather it is near universal in the world’s religions.
You may know the story of two great Rabbis, Shammai and Hillel in the
century before Jesus:

One famous account in the
Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to
Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated
that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the
entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot.
First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request,
threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to
Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

“What
is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole
Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!”¹

This
is the key to a life of faith then: Love.

Nothing
more or less.

Nothing
complicated.

Love.

Loving
God and neighbors. We can break it down, or expound on it, but in
the end it is just love. There is plenty of commentary on what it
means, which is good because it is more challenging than it sounds.

One
piece of commentary that has been most meaningful to me comes from
the Buddhist tradition. From Buddhism, have learned that
loving-kindness flows from compassion, and compassion HAS TO start
with yourself. Then it can flow to a loved one, and then loved ones,
and then known ones, and then unknown ones.

Because
most people I know, myself included, aren’t actually all that good at
self-compassion, THIS is my suggestion for you this week: once every
day find a way you can be more compassionate to yourself, that is to
treat yourself with loving-kindness.

As
this may seem strange, let me make it a bit more concrete:

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you are so lazy, there is so much
to do, get up and DO IT” self compassion may sound like, “Self,
you seem warn down. Clearly you need a few moments before anything
else is asked of you. What might make those moments more
refreshing?”

or…

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you were really mean to that
person you spoke to, you are a failure at basic human dignity.”
self-compassion may sound like, “Self, that went really poorly
didn’t it? I know I meant to do better, and I didn’t. Let’s look at
what went wrong, and see if we can find a turning point for next
time.”

or….

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, for pete’s sake, stop doom
scrolling! What is wrong with you, you know better!” self
compassion may sound like, “Self, it is a scary time and I know you
are looking for answers and hope. However, refreshing the news or
scrolling social media doesn’t have it, does it. It would be nice to
feel like there is more control in the world, but alas, my power is
only so big. What do I have control over that I could substitute?
Hydration? Taking a nap? Deep breathes? A walk? Let’s find
another way to respond to anxiety that helps more!”

That
sort of thing. This week, I hope you will do this once a day! And,
if you are superbly good at this (wow! Go you!) then you can try
having compassion for ONE other loved one a day too.

It
is funny, but loving our neighbors starts with loving ourselves. And
compassion for the world starts with letting God’s compassion reign
in our hearts.

So,
dear ones, go and love.

Amen

1 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

October 25, 2020

Uncategorized

“High Standards?” based on Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (really) and Matthew…

February 16, 2020
by Sara Baron

Choose
the things of life, not the things of death. That’s the gist of our
Hebrew Bible lesson today. Following the ways of God is choosing
life. Turning away from God is choosing death. In the passage,
these are seen as communal decisions. The desire of God is that the
people choose life, but the passage admits it is their choice.

Deuteronomy
is written from the perspective of the Exile, where the big question
was “why did this happen to us?” The answer Deuteronomy gives is
“because we weren’t faithful to God and to God’s vision for our
society.” Thus, when they look back on their communal life, they
yearn to have made better choices, to have been more faithful, to
have chosen the way of life rather than the way of death.

I
have no idea if more faithful choices on the part of Ancient Israel
would have prevented the Exile. It seems a bit unlikely, but who
knows. It is clear that Ancient Israel was not faithful to living
out God’s vision, but it is also clear that the emergence of
mega-empires and being a little country at an intersection of major
trade routes was a dangerous reality.

Nevertheless,
the questions of what way we choose to live still resonate. It seems
useful to point out that although the words “choice” and “life”
have particular connotations in the debate over whether or not women
have the right to control their own bodies, the phrase “choosing
life” has nothing to do with that. Rather, it is about the
patterns of decisions that either turn towards God or away from God.
To put it another way, it is about living in a way that enhances life
for everyone and everything, or …. not.

Choosing
death, in terms of Deuteronomy was oppressing the poor, the widows,
the orphans, and the foreigners. It was wanting a king and creating
wealth differentiations. It was allowing the justice system to
become unjust for the poor. It was putting God second and personal
prosperity first.

While
all of that has resonance today, I think there are also personal
aspects to this metaphor. They may make the most sense from the
perspective of a person who is nearing the end of their life. What
are people yearning for more of at the end of their lives? What do
they regret? What are they grateful for?

While
people and their answers are different, patterns certainly emerge.
An article on the topic from Business
Insider
offers 5 of the most common regrets of people at the end of their
lives:

1. I
wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life
others expected of me.

2. I
wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I
wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I
wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.^¹

These
give us some really good answers as to what are the things of life
(courage, authenticity, feelings, friends, joy) and what are the
things of death (expectations, overworking, fear, distance, and
disconnection.)

The
only thing I think is actively missing from the list is the choosing
death of distractions. So much of modern life is just a wide-ranging
smorgasbord of things willing to distract us from our feelings, from
discomfort, from our authentic selves. Many of these distractions
come in the form of screens, but not all do. It is EASY to numb our
selves out, rather than face our feelings, and (oh my!) respond to
what the feelings tell us about how we need to change our lives.

Some
of you have heard me say that during my renewal leave I disconnected
from social media and email. It was GLORIOUS. I still found myself
picking up my phone more than I expected, and I eventually got
curious about why. Quite often, I pick up my phone to play Sudoku
(the only game I permit on my phone). And so then I got curious as
to why I was doing it. Two reasons: either because I was feeling
anxious and wanted to be distracted from it or because I was feeling
overwhelmed deciding between things and wanted to procrastinate the
decision. Those motivations have held true since then as well. The
smorgasbord of distraction options that keep us from making hard
decisions, or from dealing with our emotions are things of death. I
suspect they are also things we may regret on our deathbeds, when
time feels precious and like a thing not be wasted away.

In
an attempt to change that pattern, to be more at ease with myself and
less worried about making the “wrong” decision, since coming back
from leave, I’ve been slowly working my way through Brené
Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection.” This week I read the
section entitled “Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of
Perfectionism.” Brown says “Where perfectionism exists, shame is
always lurking.”^²
Now many of us are trained to think that perfection is a GOOD goal,
that it is about striving to be one’s best or self-improvement, but
Brown disagrees. She says, “Perfectionism is the belief that if we
live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid
the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. …. Perfectionism, at it’s
core, is about trying to earn approval and acceptance.”^³
(OUCH.)

Now,
if I’m honest, I have had an unusually difficult year. Almost a year
ago now, the Church (big C) to which I have committed my life
declared itself morally bankrupt, and that has been …. heavy.

At
the same time, this church (little c) has been struggling through
incredibly difficult decision making that has resulted in much higher
anxiety in the system than usual. And, as family systems predicts, a
lot of the anxiety got passed to
me
as the leader. That’s to be expected. That’s what happens when
there is anxiety in a system, it gets focused on the leader.

Now, I
know that pastoral ministry is an impossible task to do perfectly.
There is a reason why there is no universally agreed upon definition
of perfect pastor. Context matters a lot in ministry – so do
people and their expectations. Each person in each church has
different expectations of what a pastor IS and should be doing, and
most of those aren’t even conscious. So those expectations aren’t
clearly articulated, and yet there is a hope that they will be met –
all of them, from all of the people, all the time, all at the same
time. My own expectations are that I should spend about half my time
on each of the following: visiting the hurting and keeping in touch
with all the people, sermon and worship work, administration and
meetings, keeping up to date with great research and scholarship and
teaching it, considering structural reorganization and systemic
change, making change within our communities, meeting people and
bringing them to church, maintaining a deep and profound prayer life.
At a minimum.

As the
anxiety has risen, my fears of my own failures have gotten sharper,
and the critiques coming at me have kept pace with my own fears. Yet
my capacities haven’t changed – I still can’t meet my own standards
in any aspect of ministry, and I don’t know that I can meet anyone
else’s either.

Now, my
suspicion is that I’m talking about something more universal than
pastoral ministry, or even leadership. I think that most of our
lives have times when we feel like what we’re doing isn’t enough, and
even worse there are times when others agree with us about that! It
feels awful, and it can be a really ugly downhill spiral. This is
the stuff Brown is talking about as perfectionism, and boy oh boy
does it make sense to me that perfectionism is about avoiding the
awful feeling of being judged lacking.

Brown
shares about people who are less stuck in perfectionism, and she says
two attributes make them different, “First, they spoke about their
imperfections in a tender and honest way, and without shame and fear.
Second, they were slow to judge themselves and others. They
appeared to operate from a place of ‘We’re all doing the best we
can.’ Their courage, compassion, and connection seemed rooted in the
ways they treated themselves.”^⁴
She concludes that people were operating from self-compassion, and
that it is LEARNABLE.
It has 3 parts:

“Self-kindness:
Being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail,
or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating
ourselves with self-criticism.

Common
Humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of
personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience –
something we all go through rather than something that happens to
‘me’ alone.

Mindfulness:
Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are
neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and
feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness also requires
that we not ‘over-identify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we
are caught up and swept away by negativity.”^⁵

So,
difficult as it is, authenticity and choosing LIFE are about facing
shame and failure, being vulnerable, and letting go of perfection.
I’m really quite sure that our self-judgments don’t happen in vacuums
like we think – most
of us believe that it is OK to be harsher with ourselves than we’d be
with others, but the truth is that judgement itself slips out
unaware, and the only way to be truly kind to other people in their
vulnerability is to become more gentle with ourselves in ours.

Perfectionism
is choosing death. Compassion is choosing life. May God help us all
as we strive to choose life. Amen

1Susie
Steiner, “The 5 Things People Regret Most on Their Deathbeds”
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-things-people-regret-on-their-deathbed-2013-12,
Published December 5, 2013. Accessed February 13, 2020.

2Brené
Brown, “The Gifts of
Imperfection” (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 2010), p. 55.

3Brown,
56.

4Brown,
59.

5Brown,
59-60. Please note, the same researcher offers other great stuff at
www.self-compassion.org

February 16, 2020

Sermons

“Finding Compassion” based on Luke 10:35-37

July 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known stories from
the Bible. Some of you are likely sick of it, some of you are bored
by it, and some of you don’t know a thing about it. Any of those
responses are acceptable around here, but I am going to review the
basic facts for those who haven’t heard them, I’ll let the rest of
you know when you may want to tune back in…

The
Samaritans were hated by the Jews. They had a shared history, to a
point. Both were part of the formation of Ancient Israel, both were
led by Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but after Solomon the Northern
and Southern Kingdoms had a civil war and separated. The North kept
the name Israel and had two parts: Samaria and Galilee, the South
became the nation Judah – from which we get the language “Jew”.
As you’d expect, the two nations that had fought a civil war to
separate from each other had some resentments towards each other.
Then, the Northern Kingdom fell in battle to Assyria in 922, its
leaders were taken into exile, and those who remained intermarried
with foreigners. Thus, the 10 northern tribes of Israel were “lost.”
Except, they weren’t really. They didn’t become a self-governing
nation again, but the love of YHWH and the Jewish tradition remained,
it was just different.

Of
course, the southern nation also fell, and also went into exile, but
it was nearly 350 years later, and they WERE able to rebuild their
nation. Because of these differences (and similarities) the Jews
HATED the Samaritans, enough that those who were going from Judah to
their Jewish colonies in Galilee would tend to walk AROUND Samaria
even though it made the trip much longer.

Thus,
having the hero of this story be the Samaritan is a really big deal,
it shakes up all kinds of assumptions about who is good in the world.
In fact, the Jewish law scholar can’t even admit that it is the
Samaritan who does right, he instead answers “the one who showed
mercy.” Indeed, the priest and the Levite (also a religious
leader) should have been the models of good behavior, and aren’t.
This story not only talks about what it means to be a neighbor, and
how showing mercy is what defines a good neighbor, it also upsets
assumptions about WHO can be good, and who IS good, and how we see
possibility in those we might identify as our enemies.

YOU
CAN COME BACK NOW

Now
that we’ve reviewed the characters in the parable, I want to zero in
on one line that jumped out at me this week. It is verse 33, “But
a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he
was moved with pity.” (NRSV) Or, in the Message, “A Samaritan
traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition,
his heart went out to him.” Or in the New American Translation,
“But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with
compassion at the sight.”

The
thing is, that every time I’ve read this story, I’ve read into it
something along the lines of, “The priest passed by on the other
side, even though he was supposed to be a person of God, the Levite
passed by on the other side, even though he was supposed to be a
person of God, but the Samaritan did what a person of God should have
done.” I’ve missed the ATTRIBUTION of motivation.

For all these years, I thought
the Samaritan did what was right because it was right, and because
God wants us to take care of each other, so we’re supposed to.
However, the story doesn’t actually say that!! The story says that
the Samaritan was “moved” and then acted on his response. The
hero didn’t do the right thing simply because it was the right thing,
the hero was moved to do it. His heart went out. He felt
compassion. He saw the man who had been robbed and something in his
humanity connected to something in the man’s humanity and he
responded to that.

Hearing it this way, it is
almost as if we aren’t responsible for fixing every single brokenness
in the world, and we don’t have to stop what we’re doing for every
hurting person we encounter, and … well, we don’t always have to be
THE Good Samaritan in every situation. Now when I say that, you
hopefully think I’m crazy, because OF COURSE we don’t, because we
can’t. Humans are finite and we simply can’t do everything for
everyone. Further, we can do a lot more good if we focus and do what
we do well than if we try to respond to every little thing that we
see.

And yet, like most people I
know, I’m so overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world, and I feel
responsible to do my part, and often unclear about where the
boundaries lie on where my part is. Which is to say, I often feel
guilty that I’m not doing more.

Two Sundays ago I was at camp,
and I invited the staff to do a little introductory ice breaker which
included the question “what kind of toothpaste do you use and why?”
I have previously found this to be an amusing question, which has
ended up giving shocking amounts of insight into people’s choices.
This time, however, the first two people to introduce themselves had
found ways to minimize their plastic use and carbon footprint in
their toothpaste choices (cool!), and were happy to share that their
WHY was out of love for creation. That was awesome. However, it
meant that for some other people who pick their toothpaste for other
reasons, and for those who hadn’t (yet) decided to make
eco-consciousness in toothpaste purchasing their priority, there was
a lot of guilt in answering the question.

That
sort of guilt isn’t productive (if any guilt is productive, which I’m
not sure it is). But it did serve as a good reminder to me of how
many things there are to pay attention to: how are we treating the
people we see in day to day life? How are responding to those who
make requests of us? How are we deciding what to buy, and who to buy
it from, and how much to pay for it, and what factors should impact
our purchases? How do we decide what to give, and where to give, and
how much to give? How do we decide when to work, when to play, when
to connect, when to rest? How do we decide where to advocate, and
for what, and how? How do we know if it has been effective? How
much attention do we give to our physical bodies and their needs,
what about our emotional needs, what about our spiritual needs, what
about mental needs, and what about worrying about if we are being too
selfish thinking about all this? How do we invest, if we can? How
do we use our time, our energy, our resources, our responses, our
responsibilities, … our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service, and our witness 😉 … to do the most good, and the least
harm without burning out?

The only clue I have is the one
in this story. The Samaritan didn’t act simply because it was the
right thing to do, because there are a lot of right things to do and
we just can’t do them all. He acted on the need in front of him that
MOVED him. He let his compassion guide him.

As far as I can tell, that’s
REALLY important. For the Camp Staff who care about eco-choices in
toothpastes, thanks be to God!! For the ones who don’t, whose hearts
go in other directions, thanks be to God!! If we try to push
ourselves to care about everything, we will burn out and be able to
care about nothing. If we try to become someone we aren’t, someone
who cares about things we don’t really care about, we’ll exhaust
ourselves and ignore our actual gifts.

Each of us in this room have a
wide range of things we’re good at, and enjoy, that support and
benefit others. Each of us have ways that compassion naturally moves
in us, and if we follow the compassion, if we allow the movement of
our hearts to guide us, we will be doing GOOD work that benefits
ourselves AND others, and the kindom, and we might even be able to do
it in sustainable ways.

But
wait, you may be asking. What if NOTHING moves me? What if I have
no compassion? What if my heart is broken and it simply doesn’t go
out to anyone? Am I damned to be the priest and Levite in this
story, the one who showed no mercy and are the examples of bad
neighborliness?

No, dear ones, you aren’t. If
NOTHING is moving you at all, if your compassion doesn’t reach out
beyond yourself then there are two possible realities. One is that
you haven’t found the place where your gifts lie yet, and it would be
useful to expand your exposure to the world until you find where it
does move. More likely though, knowing all of you, if your heart
isn’t moving and compassion isn’t flowing it is because you’ve given
too much of yourself away, and you don’t have anything left to give.

If that’s true, and I’d lean
towards thinking that is true in this beautiful collection of Jesus
followers who try to be Good Samaritans in the world, then your job
is to sit with YOURSELF and offer your heart, and your compassion to
YOURSELF until you are filled back up. You might even need to seek
out others who can offer you their hearts, and their compassion,
their listening ears or supportive shoulders.

The world can be a very
difficult place, and if you are a person with empathy, it can be
incredibly draining. If your heart isn’t moving, then it needs some
tender loving care, from God, from yourself, and from God’s other
beloveds. If compassion doesn’t move you, then give yourself
compassion.

I know this is a
funny way to preach on the Good Samaritan, the normal method is to
tell you to be a good person and take care of your neighbor, but
instead I’m telling you to follow your hearts, and to trust that God
works in you through your compassion and energy – and not to push
further than your heart leads you. Let mercy guild you, as the
parable says. But if your heart doesn’t move, then stay put. You’ll
be needed later, and being ready and rested will be good too.

Dear ones, follow
your compassion, and if you can’t find it, give it to yourself. God
wants full, whole, loving beings, and that means we need to make
space to be them – even if it means walking on the other side of
the road!!! 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

July 14, 2019

Sermons

“Mother’s Only Son” based on 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke…

June 5, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two groups of people, each with their own purposes, happen upon each other outside of a small village. This scene could go a lot of ways! The one it takes is probably not the most expected. Both groups are in motion. The grieving widow and her crowd are a funeral procession from her village. Jesus and his disciples (also a large group) are in transition from place to place.

The widow in Nain doesn’t approach Jesus. Unlike so many other gospel narratives, Jesus isn’t responding to anyone else’s request. Instead, it was simply compassion that moved him to act. He sees her. It is likely that her son was her means of economic survival. As a widow, she’d lost her husband already, so her son was her only family. Furthermore, “the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her. Without an heir, all personal property reverted to her husband’s family after his death.”¹ This meant she was both grieving as a parent grieves the loss of their child, but there was also an added complication of desperation.

Jesus is said to “see her” and “have compassion for her.” The word for compassion means “an intense inner emotion and sympathy that accompanies mercy. Luke uses the word in two later stories, when the Samaritan sees the stripped and beaten man (10:33), and when the prodigal father sees his lost son for the first time far down the road (15:20). … For Luke, compassion, while entailing great emotional capacity, also leads to action.”²This is a BIG deal. The gospels were written during the Roman Empire, with Greek influence everywhere. “For readers situated in a Hellenistic and Roman culture in which being moved by another was a sign of weakness, here (as in 10:330 and 15:20) that supposed ‘weakness’ is associated with Jesus, and through him, God. Compassion and mercy are the apex of God’s character and of the new communal life in the Spirit.”³

That is, this is a story of Jesus being compassionate, and moved by the suffering of others. It is a story of Jesus’ compassion in the midst of a cultural context that would have seen it as weakness. Yet, Jesus is an active agent in this story. His compassion is his motivation. He sees the grieving widow, and he is moved to help her.

Interestingly, in our stories today, the dead/dying sons are sort of objects. Their mothers, and the prophets of God, are the subjects. I think we should always be concerned about the ways we tell stories, and how stories can dehumanize people into objects. Yet, I find it surprising WHO becomes an object and who doesn’t in these stories.

That is, the impoverished, widows with one (dead/dying) son are the subjects. This is a surprise because we aren’t supposed to notice them in society, unless God is turning things upside down. Both of our stories today are of God turning things upside down. Likely the two stories are intentionally similar, intended to reflect light back and forth between themselves.

Luke has Jesus touch the bier. This touch would have made him ritualistically unclean. Elijah doesn’t touch that mother’s son, but he has to stretch his body over the boy’s body three times and pray out loud. Jesus is being presented not only as prophet but as an especially strong one. Jesus is being presented as caring about the widow, even though he doesn’t know her. Elijah has to be shamed into action. Jesus, in Luke, continually cares for widows, orphans, and strangers. This is particularly notable, since in the Torah, God is pretty obsessed with how widows, orphans, and strangers are treated. The prophets tended to end up having to tell the Kings that they were mistreating God’s widows, orphans, and strangers. In this story, Luke is establishing Jesus as a prophet, and reminding us that prophets express God’s compassion, especially for widows, orphans, and strangers.

Throughout Biblical history, “Widows, orphans, and strangers had this in common: they did not count on the protection offered by a citizen adult male in their family.”⁴ In the two stories we have, we don’t know the names of the mothers or the sons. That is “something common in biblical narratives, yet another sign of injustice. Women and children were, more often than not, referred to as the wife or child of male adults, in those days the only ones with any power in social and religious life.”⁵ Yet, these unnamed mothers are the subjects of their stories.

In the beginning of 1 Kings 17, Elijah begins a take down of the Canaanite god Baal, who is the god that the Israelite King’s wife worships. The Israelite King at that point was Ahab. He was officially declared one of the worst. His wife was Jezebel. She was hands down the worst. In the 3 chapter cycle in 1 Kings between Elijah as God’s prophet and the followers and prophets of Baal, there are a series of contests between “the G/gods.” It may be helpful to think of these stories as … oh, what’s that called? Those contests where two men compete to see who can pee farther, higher, and longer? Whatever that is, that’s what YHWH and Baal are presented as doing in these 3 chapters.

Since the Canaanite god Baal was known as a god responsible for the rain, YHWH creates a drought. In the beginning of chapter 17, YHWH’s prophet Elijah declared to the King Ahab that there would be a long drought until YHWH called it off. This was to prove that Baal was … ineffective. Then the story turns to show how YHWH provided for Elijah during this terrible drought. That helps YHWH appear… effective.

At first, Elijah is sent to a ravine to drink water from the stream and be fed by ravens YHWH would send along. Then the water dried up in stream because of the drought. This is the point when our story today begins. Next, Elijah is sent to Sidon, the home village of Queen Jezebel, right in the heart of Baal worshipping. He is sent to Sidon and is told he’ll be fed by a widow. This should have raised some red flags for him.

As one scholar put it, “We don’t know that he would have been optimistic about a widow feeding him. In the best of times, most widows lived a very tenuous existence. In a time of drought, their need would have been even more pronounced.”⁶ It would likely not have raised his hopes when the widow he met was out gathering sticks, a sign of her profound poverty.

I think Elijah sounds pretty awful in this story. He is demanding things from a woman he never met, and he isn’t even polite about it. “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” Makes me want to say, “excuse me??” Then he follows up with “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” I’d be likely to respond, “Dude. Why do you think I’m your servant?”

However, I’m not sure that’s the actual point of the story! In fact, I’ve been reminded recently that women have so few words attributed to the in the Bible that I should pay attention to what they say rather than get upset at what is said to and about them. The widow replies to Elijah, and says, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” She claims her own voice. She doesn’t actually seem upset at his request. She’s past that. She just lets him know how desperate she is, and that she can’t care for him too.

After Elijah convinces her to try it anyway, and they are all blessed with a miracle of abundance, her son becomes deathly ill. She is afraid that Elijah’s presence has brought YHWH’s attention to her and that YHWH is thus punishing her. She speaks again (this is a big deal) this time starting the conversation instead of responding to Elijah. “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” Her words motivate/shame Elijah, and Elijah heals her son. She also gets the last words in this story, saying to Elijah after the many days of food was provided and her son was brought back from the brink of death, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of theLord in your mouth is truth.” The unnamed widow gets a lot of voice.

The capacity to heal is associated in many parts of the Bible with a connection to the Divine. But it is only in the Luke story that the motivate to heal comes from the compassion of Jesus reflecting the compassion of God.

Like many of you, I struggle with most parts of these stories if I try to take them as factual accounts of historical events. So, I don’t. I do take them as stories meant to convey deep truths, often on multiple levels at the same time. I find myself wondering who the widows, orphans, and strangers are today. Clearly, actually, widows, orphans, and immigrants/refugees ARE still vulnerable populations in the world. That hasn’t changed.

There are others as well. Because of mass incarceration in the United States, particularly of men of color, there are many families who are vulnerable with both lack of income and lack of family connection. Our society creates functional widows and orphans.

Because of our immigration laws, strangers are at risk, and when deportations happen, families become essentially widows and orphans.

Because of a raw hunger in our world for access to sexual pleasure without mutuality or consent, we live in a world where women and children live in slavery and are trafficked for the pleasure of (usually) men. Women and children moved around the country or the world for this purpose become strangers in a strange land without access to resources. They become widows, orphans, and strangers in multiple ways.

Because of the prevalence of violence in our society, and the unconscionable number of murders, many are left as widows and widowers, orphans, and strangers.

Because of the fears and anxieties that abound, and the lack of adequate mental health care, many in our society are particularly vulnerable to those would would gain profit through addition. Drug use, abuse, and overdoses make people both living widows, orphans, and strangers and actual widows, orphans and strangers.

There are so many ways that our way of life as a society and a world MAKES PEOPLE more vulnerable and puts their livelihoods at risk. Yet, we worship a God of compassion who sees the struggles of those whose hearts and lives are broken, and is moved to change the brokenness. May we continue to learn how to receive God’s gifts of healing in our own lives and how to participate in God’s gifts of healing in the world. Amen

1Verlee A. Copeland “Homeletical Perspective on Luke 7:7-11” , p. 119 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

2Gregory Anderson Love “Theological Perspective on Luke 7:7-11” , p. 118 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

3Ibid, 120.

4Carolyn J. Sharp “Pastoral Perspective on 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)” , p. 98 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

5Ibid, 100.

6H. James Hopkins, “Homiletical Perspective on 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)” , p. 101 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 5, 2016