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April 22, 2024
by Sara Baron

“God is Good!” by Sylvester Doyer based on Psalm 150.

Introduction: This month of April in 2024 marks the 40 year anniversary of Sylvester’s diagnosis with HIV. In 1984 the diagnosis was seen as a death sentence, and indeed almost everyone diagnosed then died. Somehow, and we don’t know, Sylvester didn’t. In 2007/8 he came very close, and was lying in a hospital bed with 1 T-cell left expecting the end had come. But, somehow, and we don’t know how, it didn’t. He celebrates the love of his long time partner and now husband Denis who was the embodiment of God’s grace pulling him through.

This sharing is in three pieces. First words written decades ago by now Bishop Karen Oliveto for World AIDS day; second a prayer combing the sermon with the baptism we’d shared in just before the sermon; and third the sermon itself. For those in need of a reminder that there can be hope when it seems like hope has fled, may these words of gratitude penetrate your very being. – Pastor Sara Baron

*Call to Worship1“World AIDS Day Liturgies” Karen Oliveto

One: How have you come to this time and place?

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: How has your heart weathered the many losses of ffriends and l overs?

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: How has your mind grappled with the constant specter of death?

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: How has your soul maintained wholeness?

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s not because of government support;

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s not because of the research and medical communities;

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s not because of the health insurance companies;

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s because of the grace of God.

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s because of the presence of Christ.

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: It’s because of the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: We’ve come this far because the love of God is made visible through the care of lovers, friends, family, and caregivers.

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: We’ve come this far because nothing, nothing at all can separate us from this love.

Many: We’ve come this far by faith!

One: We’ve come this far by faith, and we will go even farther, knowing that in every step we take,

Many: God hasn’t failed us yet!

One: In every burden we carry,

Many: God hasn’t failed us yet!

One: In every setback we face,

Many: God hasn’t failed us yet!

One: Our God is a constant presence on which we can lean.

Many: God hasn’t failed us yet!

One: We can trust in God’s presence.

Many: God hasn’t failed us yet!

One: Alleluia! Amen!

Many: Amen and amen!

Prayer Before Sermon

We come before you Creator of all, thanking you for allowing us to see another day. Thank you for allowing us to plant our feet on solid ground and start on our way. We thank you and acknowledge that you didn’t have to allow us to wake this morning, but you did, and we thank you. In the mist of all that is happening in the world today we cry out Father I stretch my hand to thee and you hear us. As a reminder that you are ever near and ever listening to us Lord you are constantly giving us signs of your loving presence. This morning, we thank you for putting in our midst such a sign in the little one Koa, who we welcome into your family this morning through his baptism. We pray for his parents that they maybe a source of strength and guidance for Koa so that as he grows, he may know nothing but caring and love from them and everyone around him. Amen

Sermon

We all have a tendency when times get rough to seek comfort from
anywhere and anyone around us. If you are spiritual, we usually turn to the man upstairs.

And I was no different when in those early days I didn’t know if I would be around to see the next day. That’s when I remember growing up with a Catholic and Southern Baptist background, I found myself seeking and drawing comfort more from my Southern Baptist
background.

I recall going to church with my dad who was Southern Baptist and
there was a group of women called the Mother Board who usually would stand and sing one of those old gospel songs that they called Dr. Watts song. There was this one elderly mother who would lead the
song but before she would start, she witness, testify to and about the
goodness and greatness of God.

I am here this morning to join mine witnessing and testimony to hers and to shout as she shouts God is good. Back then the words she was saying didn’t make much sense till later. When in those darkest hours your soul cries out seeking comfort, I remember just lying there sometimes and listening to my soul cry out in the words of that
old gospel song, “Father, I stretch my hand to thee. No other help I know. If Thou withdraw Thyself from me Ah, where shall I go.” Looking back as my soul cried out, “Father, I stretch my
hand to Thee ….”, even in those darkest moments he was listening
because sitting next to my hospital bed was Denis, he put him there saying don’t give up, never, never, never give up.

My soul would cry all the louder, “Father I stretch my hand to Thee….”
There in the room working through the medical team and everything else would be that voice, “don’t give up.” The louder I’d cry, “Father I stretch my hand to Thee…..”, the louder that voice would become.

I’m here to tell you, he showed himself to me in those around me but
especially Denis who would get up in the morning walk the dogs; go to work all day; come home walk the dogs and then come up to the hospital and be that voice that whispered “don’t give up; never, never,
never give up.” They would let him sit sometimes way pass visiting
hour.

My soul would cry out even more but it changed the song and cried out “I Love The Lord He Heard my cries, And pitied every groan; Long as I live, when troubles rise, I’ll hasten to His throne” the song goes
on to say “My God has saved my soul from death and dried my
falling tears; Now to his praise I’ll spend my breath and my remaining years.” My heart this morning is full of joy, full of gratitude and thanksgiving. Last month my doctor reminded me that I’ve been
living with HIV/AIDS now for 40 years this month.

There were those days when I wasn’t sure I was going to be here, but my soul cried out “Father I Stretch my hand to Thee”, and he heard my cry. I’m here this morning to tell you He didn’t have to wake me up this morning, but He did. He didn’t have to plant my feet on solid
ground, but He did. He heard my cry and let me see another day and I am here to thank Him. My soul this morning cries out even louder “I love the Lord; He heard my cry and pitied every groan.” So,
I’m here this morning to join my story, my testimony to that elderly mother and to let you know even in those darkest of times the soul cries out and it’s heard.

There is a song that sums up how I feel today and every day.

Now my soul cries out How I got Over.
How I got over
Well, how I got over
Well, my soul look back and wonder
Don’t know how I got over (How I got over)
How I got over
I’m gon’ thank him for how he brought me
Well, I’m gon’ thank him for how he taught me

Oh, thank him for how he kept me
I’m gon’ thank him ‘cause he never left me
I’m gonna thank him for heart felt religion
I’m gonna thank him for a vision
I’m gonna sing hallelujah
Oh, shout all my trouble over
I’m gon’ thank him (Thank him for)
All he’s done for me
Thank him for all he’s done (He’s done)
For me

Amen

1Karen Oliveto “World AIDS Day Liturgies” in Shaping Sanctuary edited by Kelly Turney, 2000, page 140-1.

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sylvester (left) and Denis (right) on their wedding day in 2013.

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May 14, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Things We Fear, and the Things We Want” based on Deuteronomy 28:58-68 and John 11:17-27

I’m not particularly great at monitoring the secular calendar, so before I preach this sermon, I need to admit that I completely forgot today was Mothers’ day. This is only relevant because I’m talking about parenting, which is something I’d have sought to avoid if I remembered. But I didn’t. So here we are.

I’m intimidated by Mommy-blogs, online parent groups, and even parenting book. So I don’t read them. I guess in part I think of them as being like the Book of Discipline – the second you open it to figure something out you find you are out of compliance and then you have to decide if you want to A. Exert an exceptional amount of energy coming into compliance or B. Maintain the status quo while feeling guilty for knowingly doing it wrong. That said, I don’t think parenting quite has rules like the Book of Discipline so may it is more than I’m well aware of how judgmental people are of parents, and I’m just terrified of entering a space where I’ll be judged like that.

(It occurs to me this is a powerful motivator for why people stay away from church too. Scary parallels.)

All of that is to say, I want to talk a little bit about parenting, but I don’t know any of the official words and I’m far to scared to go down the rabbit hole of the internet to find them. So, here are words that no one has agreed upon, but I think are right. I aim to be a “feelings and needs parent.” By which I mean I seek to provide a lot of names for feelings, because I think talking about feelings helps everything, and having good names helps in talking about feelings. Things like, for example, “I have dread when I think about online parent groups.” The other part of this is needs, and for me that means that I believe that all human actions are motivated by attempting to meet basic human needs. To go back to that example, “I have dread when I think about online parenting groups because I have needs for compassion and to experience myself as competent and I’m afraid that both will be threatened.”

I’m pretty well bought in to the value of thinking about human behavior as an expression of human need, and I’m also committed to the value of using feelings as sources of wisdom. These are whole life commitments, and also parenting ones. They aren’t particularly easy parenting commitments though. It means working together to figure out what is going on, and how that has impacted behavior, and what that means about what needs are seeking to be met, and how we might meet those needs together safely and without stepping on other people’s needs. And basically there aren’t any shortcuts to doing that work.

The good part is that the skills I develop in parenting around feelings and needs are also ones that are useful in dealing with myself, and also in working with others in the church. The bad part is that one can get kinda drained doing things the hard way all the time.

Alas.

Because the another option is basically what we have in Deuteronomy, where God is presented as an authoritative, punitive parent who says “do it my way, or suffer the consequences.” And there the consequences are particularly awful.

Whenever I read Deuteronomy I remind myself to hear it in context. Deuteronomy was written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the despair of the Exile, in an attempt to answer the questions, “Why did this happen to us and what could we have done to prevent it?” Those writing have just experienced a huge communal trauma that threatened every part of their identity and theology, and they want to believe that it happened for a REASON. Because that’s just human. We want to make sense of the things that happen.

As people who largely believed that everything that happened, happened because God wanted it to happen, they then believed that the destruction had been God’s punishment, and to keep God in the right it thus it followed that their own misbehavior was the culprit. So, I can hear in our passage today an underlying assumption “oh how we wish we’d been more motivated to do things God’s way so this didn’t’ happen to us! I wonder what would have convinced us. Maybe these threats would have helped.”

Even so, I still cringe. That isn’t the way I parent, it isn’t the way I was parented, this isn’t the way I want to see power used in the church or the world, and to get to the point, it doesn’t fit the way I understand God.

And yet, the idea of God as one who punishes and rewards is quite a prevalent concept in the Bible and to take a stand against it requires acknowledging that. I am so grateful for John Dominic Crossan for the way he named the two “streams of thought” in the Hebrew Bible. One is the one we heard today – the stream of covenant, reward, punishment, and threat. It is there, it is plentiful, it can be found in the New Testament too if you are looking for it. BUT the other one is just as plentiful, and he called that the stream of “Sabbath and distributive justice.” That one says God created Sabbath as a gift to be equally distributed to all, and after Sabbath is distributed so too should be the land, the food, the education, … the power, etc. It is a vision of community, of sharing, of collaboration, and of motivation to love because God loves.

Both of the streams exist, and both are substantial. And probably both of them exist in us all to some extent, but most of us end up choosing one or the other, and I stand firmly on the side of Sabbath and distributive justice. I’m not arrogant enough to claim the other one is WRONG, or lacks value, or those who follow it are un-faithful. I just am here admitting that I know where I stand.

The punishments I hear in Deuteronomy are scare tactics, they are what people fear. But fear isn’t a great motivator, even if plenty of us use it on ourselves all the time. OK, fine, it is a REALLY powerful short term motivator, but it doesn’t change or form hearts or minds and it runs out of steam relatively quickly. The punishments from this passage flow pretty neatly into the conceptions of heaven and hell and a God who judges who goes where – used to motivate people toward goodness and compliance but also quite poorly. I’ve been asked by people why I am motivated to do good in the world if not simply to avoid hell.

OYE!

In truth, I tend to think of the two streams of thought in the Bible as being highly reflective of two steams of thought I see in our society. The Covenant one with rewards and punishments sounds a whole lot like authoritative leadership and a parental style often described as “daddy knows best.” (Which doesn’t mean that every family system in which this is the model has a father or has the father as the one who knows best.) In this system everyone else’s wisdom as well as their needs are dismissed so that the authoritative figure gets what they want and others are simply expected to comply.

The Sabbath, distributive justice one sounds like an egalitarian family, one where the feelings and needs of everyone are taken seriously, and win-win solutions are sought together.

Dear ones, I work with God toward the kindom of God because I believe it is possible to be a part of a better world. I believe we can take care of each other. I believe we can distribute goods and resources fairly. I believe people are lovely and it is worth working for everyone to be better off together. I believe in ABUNDANCE and that means there is enough for everyone if we just STOP being scared.

Which means I would rather not scare people, since fear itself is part of the resistance to just distribution.

Now, I think some of the same energy that we find in Deuteronomy is also in John this week. Martha believes her brother wouldn’t have died if only Jesus was there, and a conversation ensues about the correctness of her belief. For the Gospel of John, Jesus IS God, and whatever we may think about that notion, it is useful to remember when listening to John. So Martha believed the presence of God would have prevented her brother’s untimely death, and is rather irked Jesus didn’t show up. This becomes a opening to talk about Jesus/God’s power of life and resurrection, and in fact the story goes on past what we read today to the resurrection of Lazarus.

However, as Wilda Gafney says, Lazarus “is raised to life in the same old world. Life in Jesus happens here among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the present world.”[1] While it could be easy to hear Jesus as talking about AFTERLIFE, the context of Lazarus pulls us back to THIS world.

Which means it pulls us back to making THIS world better, together, for all of God’s beloveds, all of us. I don’t know better motivations than gratitude and hope. Gratitude for the goodness of life and love, hope that with God all things are possible. Including win-win solutions. Including everyone’s needs being met and everyone’s feelings being taken seriously. To get there, we get to practice – with each other, with our families, every where we go. And thank goodness, there is a whole lot of grace for when we slip up.

If you want to take a first, tentative step towards all this, here is a link to a “Feelings and Needs” sheet with a lot of feeling words and a list of universal human needs, and it is best to start with yourself. What do YOU feel? What do you need? And how is it you feel God nudging you along to get those needs met?

Or, maybe get to a deeper question: what is underneath what you want? What needs are really seeking to be met and what ways are you willing to try to get them met? As we learn more to trust in God to care, we become better and better at sharing that love with others. We learn to make space for feelings, and needs. May God help us all! Amen

[1] Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (Church Publishing Incorporated: New York, NY, 2021) p. 185

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 14, 2023

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May 2, 2021
by Sara Baron

“On Being Pruned” based on 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8

While I was in college I lead a group of new freshman on an outdoor adventure trip. We were assigned to trail maintenance in a very remote part of Northern New Hampshire. It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip, but it turns out that a lot of trail maintance is actually killing small trees so that they don’t grown on the trail and I really deeply hated that. No matter how many times I reminded myself that by maintaining the trail and giving people a chance to experience that pristine wilderness I was PROTECTING most of the trees, I still felt uncomfortable with each one I killed.

Similarly, I’m not particularly good at pruning. I’m so afraid of going too far that I don’t go far enough. It would be enjoyable to claim that this is related to the value, “don’t hurt living things unless you have to” but that fails to notice that things you prune are things that NEED pruning. Pruning is a source of abundant life.

According to Gospel commentaries, grapevines are things that need pruning. The Five Gospels says, “Vines do not have branches, contrary to popular usage, but ‘canes.’ Each year canes are snipped from the vines and piled in the vineyard to be burned. … The vines will not bear good fruit, or fruit in abundance, if they are not pruned annually.”1 The metaphor loving writer of the Gospel of John suggests this is true of the followers of the way of Jesus as well. We too need regular pruning to “bear fruit.”

I suspect many of us feel similarly about pruning ourselves as I do about pruning any other living thing. It is uncomfortable, it is done with caution, we don’t want to go to far. And that means that often we don’t prune quite far enough.

This may feel like an unfortunate time to come across this Gospel, because the impact of the pandemic has been a desire to return to “normal” and profound objections to the ways our lives have been “pruned” from the outside beyond our control. But here is the Gospel anyway, and when we’re honest we note that even this awful pruning has had SOME silver linings.

Now, in John’s metaphor, God is the gardener, and God is the one doing the pruning. We are fairly passive to the pruning. We are definitely NOT in charge of self-pruning. 🙂 Phew. Likewise, we are not in charge of fruit production. Fruit comes from being connected to Jesus, and well pruned by God, and we are mostly PASSIVE fruit bearers. Fruit or lack there of isn’t really our fault. We are tended, rooted, and pruned to be the best fruit bearers we can be, and we can simply BE and God’s goodness will work through us.

Nice.

While I think that idea is incomplete, I also think it is one worthy of consideration.

Many of us TRY REALLY HARD ALL THE TIME, and this suggests that we can let go and God’s goodness will keep flowing. That is an important truth, if incomplete.

So if God is the gardener and the pruner, then who are we when we resist pruning? I suspect that we are vine “canes” that are holding on for dear life to canes that have already been snipped and berating ourselves that we can’t bring them back to life. There are these dead, decaying branches and we’re holding them in place willing them to grow again, and in doing so, missing the new life springing up within us.

Several years ago I watched a TED talk by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard entitled “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” Gilbert’s ideas have stayed with me ever since. He opens his talk by saying:

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

I’m hoping you already see how this relates to letting God’s pruning without fighting it! He states his thesis directly (don’t you love that?), “What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. “ As you might hope, Gilbert proves this point along the way, and then goes on to conclude:

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen. …when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It’s as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed on the timeline. It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. 2

That is, pruning happens whether we want it to or not, and either we can make peace with it and let it be, or we can fight with it, but it won’t change the fact that things change.

While I prefer it when I can read it with some verses missing, 1 John 4 is a very important chapter in the Bible for most people I know because it says the thing they believe most, “God is love.” It says it strongly too, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. …Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their siblings, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen,

cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (11, 20). Perhaps this fits the idea that loving God and loving other people are two sides of the same coin, inseparable though they can appear to be different. These claims about God, that God is love, and that loving people is a way of loving God, are the lens through which I see the entirety of the Bible. I remain grateful that it is there, and available to be used.

John chapter 15 goes on to sound a whole lot like 1 John 4. The Vine and Branches metaphor morphs quickly to point out that the fruit that God is looking for is the practice of abiding in love. So both of them point the question: what impairs love and what encourages it? If we are being continually pruned by God, what helps us let go of what we’re done with, and what helps us connect with what God is up to next? Or, in the metaphor, how do we let go of the pruned and dead branches so there is space for new growth?

Perhaps the best thing we can do for now is notice. We can notice what has been pruned, so we can let it go and we can notice what is growing so we can watch it growing. Perhaps this passage is exactly right for right now. We aren’t the gardener, we aren’t in charge, but we can – at least – stop impeding the Gardener’s work and instead notice what it is.May it be so. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 453.

2 Dan Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self” Ted Talk, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self/transcript?utm_campaign=social&utm_content=talk&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=soci al-science#t-308201 given on March 2014 accessed on April 29, 2021.