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February 19, 2023
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That doesn’t make it unimportant though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2Gafney, 70.

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

February 19, 2023

Sermons

“Perplexing” based on Acts 2:1-18 and John 20:19-23

June 4, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Drew,
today’s confirmand, planned this worship service. He had a lot of
leeway. I was surprised at how little of it he used, and how
intentional he was in the decisions he did make. Drew likes worship
the way we usually do it, but there were some tweaks. Please
pay attention to the labeling of the music at the beginning and end
of worship 😉

Some
of the leeway Drew had was in picking the scriptures for today. He
asked what was traditionally read on this day and we read together
the Pentecost texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, year A.
After questions about the texts themselves, he decided that we should
read the two different versions of the Pentecost story from Acts and
John. When we discussed the sermon he suggested that I compare and
contrast the stories, and then pull out the meaning that is in both
of them for all of us.

I
like this young man’s idea of a sermon 😉

The
Christian liturgical calendar follows the Luke-Acts narrative about
Pentecost, placing it 50 days after Easter. The Greek ordinal number
for 50? Pentecosto. Pentecost was a part of the Jewish Celebration
of Booths (sometimes called Tabernacle), celebrated 50 days after the
Passover, and was a harvest festival. Luke’s placement of the coming
of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is saturated with meaning. The
harvest festival becomes a harvest of new Jesus followers. The
harvest festival was celebration of the bounty as a sign of of God’s
care for the people, and Luke reimagines it as a celebration of God’s
care for the people through the sending of the Holy Spirit.

It
is on this basis that Christianity celebrates the Season of Easter
for 50 days, starting on Easter Sunday and culminating in Pentecost.
We do it because Luke and Acts tell us that the gift of the Spirit
came 50 days later.

John,
however, disagrees. Neither Matthew nor Mark present any version of
this story, so the debate is simply between Luke-Acts and John. (Ah,
I should explain my language. Luke and Acts are written by the same
person and meant to be parts 1 &2 of the same book, however the
order of the New Testament messes this up.) John’s gospel places the
gift of the Holy Spirit on Easter evening. We may sometimes gloss
over this story, because it gets used as an opening to the story
about Thomas, who wasn’t there when the Spirit was given. The story
is less often heard standing alone, and it didn’t get prime attention
in the creation of the Christian calendar, which prefers Luke’s
version.

The
stories are VERY different. Luke-Acts takes place in the morning, a
fact we are reminded of because Jesus’ followers are again being
accused of being drunk. John’s version takes place at night.
Luke-Acts’s version happens in public, others see the impact of the
Spirit, and they hear the preaching, and many are converted. John’s
version involves a large group of disciples as well, but without an
audience. There is more FUSS in Luke-Act’s version, more description
of the event, more of a miraculous feel. John’s version is
relatively quiet. It mostly focuses on Jesus speaking.

In
Luke-Acts, the crowd responds to the disciples speak. It says they
were amazed, bewildered, and perplexed. The movement of the Spirit
and its impact seemed startling, and not in particularly comfortable
ways. The Spirit is known to blow as she will, and that often makes
people uncomfortable.

(An
aside: the last time I read about the Spirit, the Bible translation
I read from referred to the Spirit with feminine pronouns. Afterward
I was asked about it, and had the chance to share the fact that the
Spirit’s pronouns in Hebrew are feminine, and some translators follow
the Hebrew, despite the fact that in Greek the Spirit is gender
neutral and in Latin the Spirit is masculine. Since the Creator most
often gets male pronouns in the Bible, I also tend to want to follow
the Hebrew pronouns for the sake of balance within our conceptions of
God.)

In
both texts the Spirit comes to the Body as a WHOLE. The Spirit is
NOT received by one person, but instead by many. In Luke-Acts, given
that the occurrence is during a Jewish pilgrimage festival, faithful
Jews had filled the city to be witnesses, but the people in the house
together all receive the gift together.

The
writer in the New Interpreter’s Bible, has a fantastic comment on the
fact that the faithful Jews from around the diaspora took note that
the Galilean men were speaking to them in their languages. They
could still tell that the men were Galilean, including by their
speech. Robert Wall says, “The language of the Spirit is not
communicated with perfect or heavenly diction, free from the marks of
human identity; it is the language of particular human groups, spoken
in their idiom. God works in collaboration with real people –
people who are filled with the Spirit to work on God’s behalf in
their own world.”¹
I rather love that idea. The Spirit moved, and certainly in
unexpected ways, but still worked within the people as they were,
including with their existent accents!

Now,
likely because of the tradition doing so, I associate the story in
Acts as the normative Pentecost story, which means that I’m intrigued
by the version in John. As previously mentioned, it also involves
the Spirit coming to a group of Jesus followers, it was likely NOT
just the 12 because John doesn’t tend to think in terms of just the
12 and he didn’t designate them as such. A group of followers were
simply gathered, and they had an experience of the Risen Christ,
which IMMEDIATELY involved receiving the gift of the Spirit.

Jesus
speaks in five sentences, and two of them are saying “Peace be with
you.” This is a particularly apt greeting for the frightened
followers who had fearfully locked themselves into an upstairs room –
after hearing the women’s Easter story! The double naming of peace
both sounds like a traditional greeting imbued with God AND serves as
a reminder that fear need not define their lives. Those faithful
disciples were going to face significant persecution in coming days
and years, but Jesus, God, AND the Spirit were calling them to do so
in a different way, with the Peace of God within them.

In
this version the gift of the Spirit is the gift given so that the
followers of Jesus can continue his work, they become HIM and are
empowered to do as he had done. He was sent, so they are sent. He
breaths on them as God has breathed on the first humans in Genesis.
A new life is beginning, one that is defined by peace.

Now,
I have never much liked the LAST line of this passage, John 20:23,
which has Jesus saying, “If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain
the sins of any, they are retained.“ My objections aren’t
particularly deep. I j shy away from sin language, as I’ve too often
seen it lead to guilt and shame rather than to a free and abundant
life of peace and joy with God.

However,
Gail O’Day’s commentary on John (also in the New Interpreter’s Bible)
fixed a lot of problems for me, and made me rather glad that line was
included. She says that, “In John, sin
is a theological failing,
not a moral or behavioral transgression (in contrast to Matt. 18:18).
To have sin is to be blind to the revelation of God in Jesus.”²
Furthermore, given this understanding, “The forgiveness of sins
must be understood as a Spirit-empowered mission of continuing Jesus’
work in the world.”³
And, finally, this work is the work of the community, and never one
person alone.

So,
let me see if I can remake those words so they fit with O’Day’s
insights. But maybe first, you should
know that Gail O’Day is Dean
and Professor of New Testament and Preaching at Wake Forest
School of Divinity, and was previously professor of homeletics at
Candler school of Theology at Emory. She’s an amazing scholar, and
especially well respected as a scholar of the Gospel of John.
Following her insights, it would be as if Jesus said, “If you work
together to help people see God at work in the world, they will be
free from their fears and able to live in peace with you. If you
leave people in the fear they already know, there they will stay,
without the blessings that you now live with.”

In
O’Day’s reflections on this text, she continually turns back to John
14-17, which is called the Farewell Discourse. Within it are the
defining words, in John 15:12, “ ‘This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
O’Day reflects on the continuity between the passages, “By loving
one another as Jesus loves, the faith community reveals God to the
world”⁴
Thus, the seemingly problematic line that the institutional church
has often used to claim authority over people’s lives and access to
forgiveness is really
about
inviting the followers of Christ to share God’s love, and in doing so
to show other people the possibility of living life in peace, love,
joy, and freedom from fear.

Perhaps
it isn’t so perplexing after all. Perhaps the story of Pentecost is
the story we already know: God calls us to love one another and be
examples of the gracious and abundant love of God in the world. And
that can change everything, because it is the completion of the
Easter narrative – no matter when it happened ;). Thanks be to God
for the opportunity we have to extend love into the world. Amen

1Robert
W. Wall, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X: Acts Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2002) 58.

2Gail
O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX: John, Leander
E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,1995)
847.

3O’Day,
847

4New
Interpreter’s Bible, John, 848.

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