Human Beings

January 11, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Human Beings” based on Matthew 2:1-15 and UMC Social Principles on Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees

I spent the week processing the coup in Venezuela, in hopes of being able to offer a faithful pastoral response to it. Thank God for Karyn doing that work last week. And then Renee Nicole Good, an American Citizen engaged in peaceful protest, was murdered by ICE and lies were told about her death. My capacities for faithful processing are not as fast as the crises coming at us.

So, I’m going to revert back to the original plan which was to preach on the Epiphany and combine it with the Social Principals statement on Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees. We’ll come full circle but when I’m struggling to make sense of the world, I’ve discovered that the Bible can actually be remarkably helpful, particularly because it was well aware of abuses of power and the threats of violence.

In particular, let’s start with King Herod. He was an awful man. Paranoid, murderous, tyrannical, and power hungry, he was overseeing the Jewish homelands for the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus’ birth. We don’t have any historical documents that verify the stories of Matthew, and I suspect they didn’t happen exactly as they’re told. They deserve to be heard as meta-truths and emotional-realities for incredible meaning making, but we hold that without assuming they actually happened.

Given that King Herod was power hungry man with paranoia, he is the sort of guy who would have tried to trick innocent gift bearers from the East. Given who he was, he would have tried to gain knowledge of any threat to his power and eliminate it. And, by placing him in this story Matthew clarifies the conflict between the ways of Jesus and the ways of the Empire quickly and succinctly. And in Matthew Jesus will be crucified under a sign that reads “King of the Jews.” The accusers mean it to be ironic, Matthew means it to be true. So starting with a paranoid King of the Jews is pretty on point, his power IS threatened by the birth of Jesus, even if he didn’t know it.

This year I find my energy isn’t much on the Magi. Of course I love that the represent that the life of Jesus had an impact larger than to just the Jewish people. And of course I love the energy around what it means to follow a random sign because you just think it is yours to follow, even if it means others will not understand. And more than anything I love that they “left for their own country by another road” and in doing so ignored the direct order of the King because it was unjust and because God doesn’t require us to follow unjust laws.

But this year it is the energy around the Magi that draws me. The story of King Herod freaking out and being duplicitous, but NOT getting him what he wants. The stories of dreams and messengers of God being a part of preventing the monarch from successfully harming God’s plans. We read a little further than usual this year, because it isn’t only the Magi that leave by another route. According to Matthew the holy family travels to Egypt to keep Jesus safe. Now, the biblical scholars among you know that this works incredibly well as a literary device to set up Jesus to be “the new Moses” and help the initial hearers of the story make sense of the Jesus story.

But the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed that the holy family would FLEE to Egypt when their PRIMARY faith story was about God’s actions to free them from oppression in Egypt. Right? I mean, talk about migration and being refugees, the whole story of the Ancient Israelites and the exodus was successfully fleeing a regime that was out to kill them! So, I went to my books ready to have my awesome insight about how weird it was to flee to Egypt affirmed and read, “Egypt, a traditional place of refuge” and was pointed to verses which read:

Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam; but Jeroboam promptly fled to Egypt, to King Shishak of Egypt, and remained in Egypt until the death of Solomon. 1 Kings 11:40

Then all the people, high and low, and the captains of the forces, set out and went to Egypt; for they were afraid of the Chaldeans. – 2 Kings 25:26

And then King Jehoiakim, with all his warriors and all the officials, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death; but when Uriah heard of it, he was afraid and fled and escaped to Egypt. Jeremiah 26:21, etc.

So, there goes that theory! Instead, what we have is more complicated. Egypt was both the place of oppression and a place of refuge. Because, it turns out, life is complicated.

In Matthew, the holy family is said to be political refugees, seeking shelter from a violent regime where they couldn’t survive much less thrive. The layers of truth in that include that human beings and human families who are migrants, immigrants, and refugees are holy and sacred people of God. So too were the Magi, visitors from another land and sacred human beings beloved by God. Sacred too are the people who are migrating around the world trying to survive, including those in the United States – with or without official paperwork, AND, so to are those who show up to be allies to migrants, immigrants, and refugees.

This week’s visible ICE murder of a woman who was an American citizen was an unusually direct act of violence seeking compliance. In our country a very small group of elite white men and their conspirators are committed to minority rule for their own benefit. They see some people as targets and other as obstacles and wish to eliminate both. Historically there has been some restraint, some pretense of an agreement that we don’t simply kill those who peacefully protest, or that we don’t simply take over other countries. The restraint is slipping.

People are being eliminated because they’re getting in the way of the goals of the few.

We are living in a violent time, where a well-organized and protected group of elite men and their conspirators are working hard against the needs of the majority. Far too many people believe their propaganda, and the things we are seeing are abominable.

And, I believe that these are the death throes of our old system of elite white men and their conspirators running our country. They wouldn’t be working this hard for power if they didn’t see it slipping from their grasp. The work of God to take care of all people, to engage in the work of shared humanity, to distribute resources for the common good, to be in sacred kinship relationships is having an impact. The system that benefits the few is scared and lashing out with violence, but in the END it is not going to win.

The Roman Empire was massive, powerful, and nearly indestructible.

The Magi were just a few outsiders who refused to follow the kings dictates.

Jesus was a poor man born to poor family who spent most of his life talking to peasants and listening to God.

But, like Matthew, we know that King Herod was a lot less important in the annals of history than Jesus was. Matthew tells us of a paranoid, murderous, tyrannical, and power hungry king who would stop at nothing for self-gain. And Matthew tells us of a refugee family struggling to survive in the midst of political and economic upheaval. And it is the refugee family that ends up mattering. Thanks be to God. May we follow God’s values on the sacred worth of all human beings, and be faithful along the way to God’s ends. Amen

January 11, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

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January 7, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Seeing God” based on Exodus 1:8-22 and Matthew 2:1-18

In theology there is something called “the problem of evil.” It may not be what you’d think. You might think that this would be the problem that there IS evil in the world, which I think is the most reasonable interpretation of the words. Instead, it is the question of WHY there is evil in the world, and how one balances that reality with their conception of God.

Because, if you believe in an all-powerful God, and you notice that evil things happen, then you have to figure out why it happens. There are overly simplistic answers for that: 1. God prioritizes free will 2. God doesn’t actually care 3. What we think is evil isn’t and God has a “plan” that we can’t see.

Process theologians, who trained me, solve it a different way. They say that God is the MOST powerful being, but not ALL-POWERFUL. Therefore they can hold firm that God is all-loving without having to answer the question of why evil things happen.

I’m with them on that, several years of reflection on the ideas they present got me there, despite the rather difficult work of giving up on the idea of God as all-powerful. However, while process theology has good critiques of every other theology’s answer to to the problem of evil, I have never thought they’ve adequately answered the question either.

There are a lot of easily accessible answers I also dislike: 1. humans are fundamentally evil; 2. Humans are just animals and animals are vicious; 3. Souls are good but bodies are bad and in trying to protect and care for bodies people do evil. None of these work for me. I don’t think people are evil, I rather think people are naturally good – or at the very least neutral. I don’t like ANYTHING that disparages nature or claims that it is evil because I think the natural world is fundamentally sacred, and that includes BODIES which I desperately believe we need to re-affirm as sacred and good.

Our scriptures today point to evil. The Pharaoh, in his fear, enslaves the people – evil. The Pharaoh, in his fear, orders babies murdered – evil. King Herod, in his fear, ordered the massacre of infants – evil. The world today tells us of evil too, it doesn’t require looking very hard to find it. I, for one, had a meeting this week for the Annual Conferences on how we are going to fund the lawsuits related to accusations of child sexual abuse in the church and evil doesn’t feel far away at all.

Sometimes I hear people “solve” the problem of evil by claiming it is all the fault of one of the traditional sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony or sloth. I think you can hear in what I’ve already said that if pushed I might say that evil emerges out of fear. But at the core, I really actually just agree with Old Turtle1. I think that people forget that they are “a message of love from God to the earth and a prayer from the earth back to God.” I think the answer to the problem of evil is simply that we sometimes forget the most important things.

Apparently, my answer is a common one in Celtic Christianity, which is a tradition of God-knowing that I believe I’ve always been taught but without being told where it came from. In John Philip Newell’s book “Sacred Earth Sacred Soul” tells of the 2nd century teacher Irenaeus who saw “Christ as respeaking the sacred essence of the universe, re-sounding the divine that is at the heart of all things. This was to see Christ as reawakening in humanity what it has forgotten.”2

A few centuries later Pelagius “taught that grace was given to reconnect us to our nature, which was sacred and made of God. Divine grace is not given to us to make us something other than or more than natural. It is given to us to make us truly natural, to restore us to the sacred essence of our being.”3

A few centuries later, John Scotus Eriugena taught “Everything is sacred…but we live in a state of forgetfulness of what is deepest in us and in everything that has being. The more we forget our true identity, the less we treat one another as sacred. We suffer from ‘soul-forgetfulness.’ But Christ, he says, is our memory, our ‘epiphany.’ He comes to show us what we have forgotten, that we are bearers of the divine flow. He reawakens us to our true nature and the true nature of the earth, that we are and all things are in essence sacred.”4

The problem is that we forget, and then the real answer is to learn how to remember.

I love the midwives in Exodus, Shiphrah and Puah. They are said to remember God, and therefore they have the courage and resilience to resist the authority of the king himself. I wonder, sometimes, if they were able to do that because they were two. What might have been overpowering to one – the power of the direct command from the king – couldn’t stand up their shared sense of what was right. I think part of the gift of God in helping us remember is the gift of each other. People with whom we make sense of the world, people with whom we decide which laws are unjust, people who remind us that everyone and everything is sacred and should be treated as such. Part of remembering is each other.

Tammy Rojas, in We Cry Justice, comes to a similar conclusion:

The only way we can change the system of oppression we live under is for all of us to come together. WE may be taught division, but we can unlearn it. We can fight back against it and show that love of all people will be what saves us.

…

God dwells within the walls of closed rural hospitals and pours onto the streets with those demanding health care as a human right. There are midwives saying no to the injustice of killing babies and midwives saying no to the denial of health care. It is through nonviolent direct action that we can overcome the empire.”5

Which, I think, gets us to our gospel lesson of the day. Funniest thing, calls for nonviolent direct action to overcome the empire OFTEN reminds me of the gospel.

The magi are said to have an epiphany, right? I mean, that’s why we CALL this Sunday epiphany. I’m not quite sure which thing counts though. Is the epiphany the experience of God’s loving presence that they experienced in meeting Jesus? Or is the epiphany simply a reference to the dream telling them not to return to Herod? I believe they both count, and maybe today should be called “Epiphanies.” Anyway, the radical action we see in the midwives refusing the order of the Egyptian king we ALSO see in the magi returning home by another route. They were outsiders, foreigners, who had been given access to the country with an agreement that they would return to the king with the information he wanted in order to strengthen his power. But they didn’t. They went home by another way.

God, whether as seen in Jesus, or in a dream, reminded them. They made the choice to honor the sacred life of the baby, and went home by another route. That’s another way we can remember – simply by the grace of God. Sometimes we can simply see the love of God shining in the world and it reminds us. Sometimes we have a dream, a vision, a sudden insight, and we are reminded. Thanks be to God for those epiphanies.

The gospel does indicate that evil still exists, right? The courageous actions of those who are reminded of the sacred power of love matters, but it doesn’t erase evil. The king still forgot, and his power was still magnificent. To be fair, we don’t have a record of a massacre of babies in that time, and we would because records were decent. This story is told to name Jesus as the new Moses, to connect one king’s paranoia to another, and one baby’s miraculous life to another’s.

The problem is that while babies weren’t killed there and then, they have been. They are. So while the story “isn’t true” it also is. And it is never the full story. When we see the evil things of the world, and the natural disasters, we can usually find some midwives in their midst too. Doctors without Borders, World Central Kitchen, UMCOR – people organized to respond to horrors by caring for the sacred people who are hurting the most. Evil is real, but so is goodness.

It is IMPERATIVE that we remember the sacredness of the world, of its creatures, of humanity. Forgetting that sacredness has created so many of the problems we see around us every day.

So, how do we remember? We remind each other, like the midwives. We are given glimpses of insight, like the Magi. We come together to worship, like communities of faith around the world throughout time, to remember who God is and what God loves and soak up God’s values and dreams to inoculate ourselves from the forgetting around us. We pray, and find ways to connect directly to the Divine, to soak up God’s love for ourselves so we can see it reflected in others.

And, we pay attention. We look for signs of the sacred around us. The unique beauty of each snowflake. The hope of seed catalogs. The wonder of clean water. The sounds of children. Smiles of greeting between friends. Snuggly mammals. Delicious food. Flight patterns of birds. The Holy One is with us, all around, reminding us of the sacredness of God and creation and each other all the time in infinite ways. The Good News of God’s love is EVERYWHERE when we look.

There are reminders everywhere – which is good because we need a lot of them. Dear ones, take note of the signs of God’s goodness, of the sacredness of the earth and of life. Epiphanies are everywhere. Then, when you see them, remind each other. That’s a core part of what it means to be people of faith, and when I look around at the world, I believe we are desperately needed as reminders to all of God’s people. Amen

1Douglas Wood, Old Turtle (Mexico: Scholastic Press, 1992). If you don’t have this book, you can watch it be read here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om1Wemm3a1U

2John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul (USA: HarperOne, 2021, p. 28.

3Newell, 30.

4Newell, 89.

5Tammy Rohas, “45: Midwives Who Say No” in We Cry Justice, ed. Liz Theoharis (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021) p. 196-7, used with permission.

January 7, 2024 – Epiphany

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

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January 8, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Radical Experience of Acceptance” based on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

I have a very clear recollection of the first time I paid attention to the words of Bobby McFerrin’s arrangement of the 23rd Psalm. I’d heard it before, but I hadn’t LISTENED before. There was a church choir concert in Hollywood, the church I interned at was hosting, and one of the choirs sang it.

I was in seminary. I was reasonably familiar with the 23rd Psalm. I had expectations of what words I would hear. And then what I did hear was: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I have all I need. She makes me lie down in green meadows Beside the still waters, She will lead”1 All my breath left me, and I found tears rolling down my cheeks.

I went to a progressive seminary. I’d been led by intentional and caring clergy for years. I knew, and used inclusive language for God. I’d heard it used. I knew that the Holy Spirit was feminine in Greek. I knew God wasn’t male. I knew I was made in the image of God.

And.

And in that moment in a new and profound way, I felt included as a child of God. This overly common imagery of God as a shepherd translated from a distinctly male image with male pronouns to a distinctly female image with female pronouns mattered to me, to the deepest parts of my being. This is related, I think, to music touching a different part of our beings than logic and rational though. When that choir sang “she makes me lie down in green pastures” I felt safe and welcome, cared for and most significantly of all, I FELT the reality that I could be a reflection of God as a woman. To hear the metaphor of God as female in that song healed me a little bit. EVEN THOUGH I’d already “known” all of that.

Probably because there is a difference between knowing (head) and knowing (body and spirit).

As I read these epiphany scriptures this week I found myself cringing a little bit at the repetition of “daughter.” It felt like too much. I wanted to soften it, take it back, make it quieter. It felt like maybe it would exclude those who aren’t female.

But, I read the textual notes, and Dr. Gafney wrote in them, “Isaiah 60 speaks to a female entity, Zion, Jerusalem, frequently styled as God’s daughter; each “you” and “your” is explicitly feminine and singular, rhythmic and repetitive in Hebrew. I have added “daughter” each place this occurs for the English speaker-reader-hearer.”2 So, it is truly there, and what is odd is to hear it explicitly in English, “Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.” (Isaiah 60:1)3

So, instead of softening the language, I’ve sat with it. What I’veheard is that when God reveals God’s self to us (“epiphany” which is the name of the Sunday we’re celebrating) it often has to do with a radical experience of acceptance – and quite often a radical experience of acceptance when we were expecting rejection.

This is where we are gifted with a lot of wonderful power as a church. We are the people who can use they/them pronouns for God, and let people who are non-binary that we see God in them and them in God. What a gift to be able to give!

I have often reflected with awe at the impact of this church on those who were raised in it. In the process of preparing celebrations of life for church members, I get to know their families, and I am often struck by how this church has gifted the world with men who are free to be tender and compassionate and women who are free to be strong and clear, and visa versa, and more so. This has been for a long time a place where gendered expectations are put away and space is made for the fullness of God’s gifts in each person to emerge. What an incredible legacy this church has!

I have heard stories from many of you about your process of finding your way here, and the radical experience of acceptance that kept you here. One story involves sitting in a car in the parking lot and wondering if this church would really have enough love for the one waiting to enter. (You did.) One story involves looking for a long time for a church that could welcome two people with very different needs, and the powerful relief that came when it was offered. You did that too. A lot of stories involve a positive experience of faith in childhood, a developing sense of scientific knowledge and logic, and the wonder of finding a place where faith and knowledge can be held together in peace. Many stories involve a yearning for a community, and a struggle to find one who knows God well enough to know how big God’s love is. (This actually saddens me. I wish every church knew the expansive and epic extent of God’s love.)

Thanks be to God, that for many people, this is a place of epiphanies. This is a place where God reveals God’s self. This is a place where people experience radical acceptance, and that changes EVERYTHING.

Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.

AND

Arise, son; shine, son; for your light has come, son, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, son.

AND

Arise, child-of-mine; shine, child-of-mine for your light has come, child-of-mine, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, child-of-mine.

God speaks to all of you, to all of us.

It strikes me as sort of funny that this story from Matthew is the one that gets called the story of the Epiphany. Of all of the revelations of God in the scriptures, this doesn’t seem like the most notable. Most of the story is about the sages from the East talking to Herod, which I’m quite confident was NOT a strong God-moment. I will give it to them though, the story is courageous. Asking the King of Judea about the one born TO BE King of Judea is not usually a good choice. But, it is the one presented here.

The story says that they had a God-filled experience in following the star, an even stronger one in meeting “the child with Mary his mother” and an additional one in a dream that warned them about Herod. So there ARE three epiphanies in this story, but what is the Bible if not stories of the revelations of God’s love?

It seems to me there are some profound reflective questions gifted to us by these texts:

When have you had a radical experience of acceptance? What was it like? Why did you need it? Is it share-able?
When can you/we offer radical experiences of acceptance? Where is it needed? How can we do it?

I’m encouraged to note that it isn’t always a heavy lift to do this work. Hearing a beautiful song can be a radical experience of acceptance. Seeing the progress pride flag in out hallway has been for many a radical experience of acceptance. Using a variety of pronouns for God and God’s people can be a radical experience of acceptance. Making space for someone to be sad or mad can be a radical experience of acceptance. The reminder that it can be little things that offer radical experiences of acceptance lightens the load a little bit.

Because I believe we are called to radically accept, and love, and celebrate God’s gifts in all of God’s people. We are called BY our epiphanies to be people who offer space FOR epiphanies. We are ourselves radically loved by God, and we are able to offer God’s abundant love to others.

Thanks be to God! Amen

1 Lyrics here: https://genius.com/Bobby-mcferrin-the-23rd-psalm-dedicated-to-my-mother-lyrics, has a link to recording too.

2 Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), 35.

3 Dr. Gafney’s translation, page 33.

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

January 8, 2023

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January 9, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Another Road Home” based on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

I really like the idea that the Christmas stories in the gospels are “Gospels in Miniature” that highlight the major points of each gospel writer, foreshadow what is to come, and even tell the whole story in a nutshell.1

Given the Gospel in Miniature idea, it is really easy to see why Luke tells us about shepherds in the field at night watching their sheep: he wanted us to know that the birth of Jesus was good news for the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely and he made his point early and often. Luke is spiffy though, and you should never underestimate him. With the shepherds he ALSO manages to tied Jesus to David one more time, in case we’d missed the point previously.

But, why does Matthew tell us about Magi from the East, with the power to access King Herod, impractical baby gifts, and only a fleeting encounter with Jesus?

Ironically, I believe that this was because Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience, and he was making the point he’d make again at the end of the gospel, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” namely that the good news of Jesus expanded past even the community of the faithful Jews.

The Magi from the east are outsiders, others, non-Jews. They have access to other wisdom, other traditions, other power. By having them perceive the spiritual earthquake of Jesus’s birth tells Matthew’s audience just how BIG this story is, and how profound it’s impact will be.

I think “the east” is particularly significant as well. To the east is the land Abraham left when God called him. Also, to the east is Babylonia, where the exiles had once been taken, and lived in captivity. That means to the east is where their release came, and like Abraham, the exiles returned home “from the east.”

By the time Jesus was born “to the west” was the power center of Rome, and the local power center of the Judea was also to the west. The powers to the west are the ones that Jesus will be organizing against in his life, and they are the ones with the power to end his life. So, it is from the east that Jesus is recognized for who he is, and that makes sense. This feels like a foreshadowing of Palm Sunday and Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem from the EASTERN gate too.

So these EASTERN foreigners discern that there is something new and amazing happening and they come to see it for themselves. When they stop to ask for directions at the palace, the paranoid and power-hungry King Herod (who historically really was known for being incredibly bloodthirsty and insecure) decides to use them for his own purposes, to take out any threat to his kingship with haste.

The Magi are being used as the King’s spies.

But when they arrive and discover the humanity and vulnerability of Jesus, and of Mary, and (maybe) of Joseph, something shifts in them.

That may sound minor, “something shifts in them” but it is the best explanation I have for Easter too. Somehow, the very frightened disciples who were hidden away trying to save their lives had “something shift in them” and they weren’t afraid anymore, and they lived as Jesus lived, and were even willing to die as Jesus died.

A little shift inside can have HUGE consequences.

Something shifts in the Magi, maybe at meeting Jesus, maybe in a dream, maybe both, “and they left for their own country by another road.” This suggests that even meeting Jesus as a baby/toddler was significant enough to help people refuse the power of the Empire 😉

They refuse the power of King Herod, and they change their plans and find another way.

That does sound like an epiphany. Epiphany means a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being OR a moment of sudden revelation or insight.2 This sounds like both. They saw the divine in Jesus, or they experienced the Divine in a dream (or both) AND it was for them a moment of sudden insight leading to a shift within.

They went to their own country by another road. They went home, but they went home changed.

One of the fun parts of the Christian tradition is that we assume that the Magi showed up more than a year after Jesus’s birth. That is, this Epiphany celebrates the Magi showing up for last year’s Christmas. (Hmmm, given pandemic time warps, that sounds right, doesn’t it?) Given that, it is always a little bit the Christmas season, because the Magi are always journeying to Jesus – AND I think always journeying home by another route. The travel, and the change, are constant.

It could be tempting, right about now, to give up hope. It is 2022, and COVID 19, named for 2019 is STILL sending shock-waves through our lives, despite vaccines, despite prior infections, despite all we’ve given up for nearly two years. We’re back at trying to protect the capacity to keep schools open and trying to keep hospitals from being overrun (and neither are going terribly well.) In my house this week, we heard about more people testing positive for COVID than any other week of this pandemic.

It is scary.

AND we have to make decisions all over again about what is safe and what isn’t and where to spend our risk tolerance and what impact it will have if we get it wrong.

And it exhausting.

And people are SICK, some of them really sick, some of them dying.

And it is horrible.

And I wonder where God is inviting us to take another road home. I wonder about epiphany, and God showing up and surprising us, and shifting things within us, and making new things possible. Because I believe that God is with us, and God shows us a new way when it seems there is no way, and God is able to bring life even out of death, and God is with those who are alone, and God is ultimately creative.

There are “other roads home.”

They’re new to us, we haven’t chosen them before (maybe for good reason), they come without good maps, and there are unknown dangers along the way. That said, the roads we came by are now impassable to us, and the way home is by another way. (Fair warning, home will be changed when we get there too, but you already knew that.)

May God help us to travel the roads we are now on, no matter how we got here, and may we find enough promise them to make it through another day, and another day, and another day. Amen

1Borg and Crossan “The First Christmas”, major theme.

2Apple Dictionary 1/6/2022.

Sermons

“What Do the Wise Men Mean?” based on Isaiah 60:1-6…

January 8, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In April of 2002 I was studying abroad at Oxford University in England when my dearly beloved grandfather died. He passed away late on a Saturday morning, which meant I heard about it around nightfall. With the help of friends and housemates I figured out what to eat for dinner (seriously, this involved asking a friend what I liked to eat, I was beyond knowing), found a chapel to pray in (a housemate walked with me, seemingly I wasn’t trustworthy to walk a few blocks by myself), and got a plane ticket home (a friend found it for me). By the end of the night things were set: I was scheduled to leave early the next morning a bus to Heathrow airport and would get to Newark by that evening.

In those frugal college days I didn’t keep much cash on hand, and even by those standards I happened to be running low on pounds. I had dollars, but I didn’t have have pounds. For reasons that now escape me, I exchanged currency was in the back of a department store, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about the need for cash the night my grandfather died. I didn’t realize I needed money that night, and even if I had, by the time I could have pulled myself together enough to notice – the store would have been closed.

By morning I realized my error, but it was Sunday, and EARLY morning, and there was no way to solve it. (In retrospect I could easily have asked my housemates, but my deeply independent nature didn’t come up with that idea!) I got to the bus on time, with a plan. I had enough money in American dollars to pay TWICE the bus fare. I figured that would work.

It didn’t.

The bus driver was sympathetic, but unable to let me on the bus without paying the fare – in pounds. I had no pounds. I had no way to get pounds. And I had to get on THAT bus to make my flight home. Getting home to my family felt like a need. The grief for my grandfather was deep seated, and raw.

I don’t remember how it happened exactly, someone must have overheard my offer of paying twice the fare and why I had to get home, but the people on that bus paid my fare for me. Many people offered one pound each and then it was paid and I was on my way home. My independent nature was so embarrassed by that at the time that I blocked the story for years and it has only recently re-emerged.

Now, with a bit more perspective, I’m less ashamed that I wasn’t able to do everything perfectly without notice and in the midst of grief. Now, with the wisdom of another decade and a half I’m not embarrassed to have needed help anymore. Instead I am grateful for the gifts of strangers when I needed it most

I am so grateful for the chance to read Shirley Readdean’s excellent sermon from last week, and she motivated me to be playful with the text as well. The story of the magi was told to make sense of the world and of Jesus, it is intentionally metaphorical and rich in meaning, making easy space for us to explore our own lives within it.

It struck me this week that accepting gifts from strangers isn’t particularly easy – at least it hasn’t been for me. I’m told Simone Weil once said, “It is only by the grace of God that the poor can forgive the rich for the bread they give them,” which has to do with both the challenge or receiving gifts AND the issues of income inequality. This story of Matthew’s gets into all of that!

What would this experience have been like for Mary and Joseph? They were relatively young, or at least she was and he might have been! Mary certainly hadn’t known much of the world, and there is no reason to think Joseph had either. They were likely quiet provincial. By the best guesses of scholars they were poor. If Joseph made his living as a carpenter that would mean that there was no longer access to the family lands – they’d been lost to debt. Peasants living without land were worse off than those still living on it. Likely they worked very, very hard and had little time to travel. If they were from Nazareth (which seems more likely than anything else), then they knew about the Roman destruction of Sepphoris 4 miles away and about 8 years earlier. They knew oppression, poverty, and hard living. They also knew a deep faith in a God who cared about the people, and who did not want them dying of complications of poverty. I suspect it was their Jewish faith that helped them get through the day, every day. I suspect it was much easier to trust fellow Jewish residents of Nazareth than it was to trust outsiders or non-Jews, the world had taught them to be wary.

Or, if we want to take Matthew’s story at face value and put the Holy Family in residence in Bethlehem, then they were in a small village 6 miles from Jerusalem. There, too, they would learn to be cautious of outsiders, particularly the Roman Empire and their regional authorities: the religious leaders of the day. Mary and Joseph would have found it much easier to trust the Jews in their own village than outsiders, the Temple priests, or non Jews.

Wherever they originated from, as Jewish peasants Mary and Joseph would have had good reason to be hesitant about outsiders and non-Jews. Furthermore, the primarily stories of the faith included the stories of exile and return – that is, of domination from Eastern empires and their strange gods. The gospel of Matthew tells us that the the magi were from the East, and that they stopped in Jerusalem on their way to Bethlehem. That would be reminiscent of the eastern empires that had previously dominated the Jews AND a connection to the empire that currently dominated them. These magi had the power to gain an audience with King Herod, who was known to be crazy and cruel. Can you see what I’m getting at? It is possible that the magi would have been terrifying to Mary and Joseph, and for good reason. Then, to add to all the complications of their existence, these strange and powerful strangers came into their home bearing VERY expensive gifts.

How would Mary and Joseph felt? Would they have been afraid? Were they overwhelmed? If so, what bothered them the most? The non-Jewishness? The connection with their history of exile? The connection the Magi had to the power-players of the Roman Empire? The power they themselves had? The foreign language? The expensive gifts? The expectations placed on their baby son? Or was it simply the danger the strangers brought with them by declaring Jesus to be a threat to Herod’s power? Whichever of these bothered them MOST, I’m thinking that if I was in their sandals, I might not want those magi around very much.

The magi are VERY different, VERY powerful, and thus VERY dangerous. They don’t know Jewish traditions or laws, and they are connected to the power structure of oppression. Furthermore, in basic human nature, it is especially uncomfortable to receive gifts that can never be repaid. Jewish peasants would never EVER be able to repay the gifts of the kind that the magi bought, Jewish peasants were living just BELOW subsistence level and gold, and frankincense and myrrh are EXPENSIVE. In fact, those are the kinds of gifts that aren’t given in normal human exchange – they are the kind of gifts only given to people in power (like kings) in hope of recognizing the king and winning favor. The gifts of the magi communicate that Jesus was perceived as a king, of a standard order human kingdom. Likely that’s one of the reasons the story is told, to prefigure Jesus’ kingship. However in real life, that would be AWKWARD.

The presence of the magi in the story Matthew tells helps develop the story in other ways too: it gives a reason for King Herod to know of the threat of Jesus, thereby making the journey to Egypt seem more plausible (really it exists in order to present Jesus as the new Moses); it indicates that the life of Jesus would be significant beyond the realm of Judaism; and it foreshadows the ways that the adult Jesus would threaten the power of Rome and the authority of its appointed leaders. The magi themselves, coming from East to Jerusalem, fulfill dreams dating back to the exile, as we can see in Isaiah. That dream is not just of a restoration, but of restored power to the Jewish people and international recognition. The coming of the magi in Matthew is meant to indicate that Jesus is bringing the fulfillment of the desires of centuries. Even so I still think the men themselves would be terrifying to actual Jewish peasants.

On top of it all, I still wonder what it would have been like to such receive gifts from strange and powerful men. It can be hard to receive gifts anyway, they require a certain openness and vulnerability. It is harder when the gift is one-sided and cannot be reciprocated. I think, at least for me, it is also difficult to receive gifts from strangers. I take this from the fact it has taken me nearly 15 years to tell the story I started with! Furthermore, the acts of giving and receiving a gift is a connection between people, and would be hard to build a connection with people who are frightening, strange, and powerful. Finally, and this I’ve been worried about since childhood, if these expensive gifts were given to the Holy Family before a significant journey HOW ON EARTH would they keep them safe without a caravan to protect them?

The story doesn’t go into these details at all. It just says the magi offered Jesus the gifts and then left by another road, thereby short-changing Herod. Metaphorically this suggests that being present to Jesus would change how people used their power in the world and who they trusted. That suggests that the giving of the magi’s gifts to Jesus was helpful to the magi! That’s easy enough to believe – it is a wonderful and transformational thing to be able to give a generous gift. (This may be why they’re hard to receive!)

It is with humble gratitude that I think of the people who paid for my bus fare, people whose names I didn’t know and who I have thus been unable to pay back. They have left me with gratitude for the opportunities I have to help others along the way, and gave me a more clear sense that we as humans are all in this together. That moment in time was one when I truly didn’t have what I needed, and others provided it. I am thankful to have known that need, and even more thankful to have had it cared for.

The graciousness of Mary and Joseph who let strange and powerful foreigners into their home to greet their baby and give expensive gifts is mesmerizing, even after hearing it every year. Those strange men whose very lives seem designed to frighten were actually intending to extend grace. They were the ones most changed by the experience. Part of the grace of receiving gifts is allowing the gift-giver to be transformed. Thus, may we find the grace to be open to the gifts that strangers have to offer, and receive them with openness and gratitude! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 8, 2017

Sermons

Untitled

January 3, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

While Luke places the announcement of the birth of Jesus in the hills around Bethlehem with the lowly shepherds, Matthew brings in the wise men from the east. It works pretty well both thematically and as foreshadowing. Matthew ends with “the great commissioning” telling the disciples go “go and make disciples of all nations.” The premise here is that the those with authority within the religious structure misread what is going on in their midst, and yet those who are paying attention – even those from outside of Judaism – are able to see. Jesus’s life was more expansive than anyone could have dreamed, and Matthew sets up this truth from the very beginning.

The magi also play an interesting role in engaging with the political power of the day – dropping by on King Herod and raising his fears about remaining “the king of the Jews.” In Matthew, this is the title under which Jesus is crucified. The words of the magi are terrifying to King Herod. They represent his worst fears, even the rumor of such a thing as what they are saying – that a new King of the Jews has been born – could end his rule. Herod plays it wisely, seeking ever more information, and inviting the magi back to tell him what they have found.

The magi “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,” go home to “their own country by another road.” All week I’ve been hearing the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken in my head.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I first came to know Frost’s poem when I was a teenager at Sky Lake’s music camp and we sang Randall Thomas’ arrangement of it. The words were engraved in my mind at that point, and the beauty of the music and the words have stayed with me. Scholars debate about whether or not Frost’s poem is satirical, and I recognize that it may well be satire, or at least partially self-effacing. The last stanza, starting with “I shall be telling this with a sigh” seems a bit overdramatic not to have SOME irony in it. Yet it also contains some deep truths.

This week, considering the journey home of the magi, their journey kept being informed by “The Road Not Taken.” What would have happened if they had gone back by the same road? How were their lives, and the lives of those around them, changed by their choice to change course? I guess, even more than that, it occurs to me that to take the story seriously to ask how their lives were impacted by their earlier choice to “follow the star.” Their entire journey was “The Road Less Traveled.” They left their country, their homes, their language and customs in order to follow a hunch. Theirs was a unique journey.

The text says that they were overwhelmed with joy when they saw that the star had stopped. It implies that the joy was related to actually getting to see the new-born king of the Jews. The experience seems to have mattered to the magi. While we don’t know much about them, we have heard that they are course-changers. They were willing to travel to follow a hunch, and they were willing to change course on the way home based on another one.

I find myself wondering what happened AFTER this story in their lives. Symbolically, their presence in the Gospel is powerful. They stand in for the importance of Jesus, they foreshadows the breadth of the meaning of his life, they condemn both the political and the religious power structures of the day. But what about THEM?

Now, I’d say that “we don’t know” because the story doesn’t tell us, but even that isn’t entirely true. I think the story of the magi is unlikely to be based in historical fact. However, as John Dominic Crossan is often saying, “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.” So, let’s go with that. “The Magi never came, the Magi are always arriving AND departing.”

I guess my question, at its core, is: What would it have mattered to magi from the east to see a baby with his mother somewhere in Judea or Galilee? This is, to be frank, not a particularly unusual sight. Most of societies through most of history can offer an opportunity to see a mother with her child. Would it have been special because of the expectations around it? Are we meant to believe it was special because of the parties involved? If so, how would a 18 month old Jesus be different from another 18 month out? (I’m making up months here, we have no idea how long the travel took, but historically it is believed to be more than a year and less than two.)

Actually, I really love that question! What would we expect from a toddling baby who would as a man utter some of the great wisdom of the world? Would he be particularly gregarious? Or rather shy? Would he be absorbing all the information coming at him, or would he be a little bit sleepy at that point in the day? Would he be cranky? Sometimes 18 month olds are cranky. Would he be wandering around, putting everything in sight in his mouth? Would that include the gold, frankincense and myrrh? If we want to think of Jesus as the most perfect human ever to be (and if I had to guess, I’d guess some of you do and some of you don’t), what would that look like in an 18 month old? And furthermore, what does that tell us about what we believe perfection looks like and what we’re trying to be???

These magi met a baby and his mother in some nondescript location. And, for the sake of the story, let’s say that it was an amazing and miraculous experience. I mean, I feel that way about babies EVERY SINGLE TIME, so I can guess that if someone was looking for a miracle and hanging out with a baby, they could leave with the impression they’d had one.

Then what? Were the magi people who tended to travel around the world looking for curious experiences and new wonders? If so, how did they manage to have such expensive gifts to offer? If not, what drew them that time? I think it makes more sense to assume that this was an unusual experience for them. What would their lives have been like afterward? Unlike the disciples, or even the would-be disciples we hear about later in the Gospels who had the chance to talk with Jesus, hear his teachings, experience his healing, and turn around their lives, the magi met a babbling baby.

Did they go home from their journey west and start seeking out the stories of the Jewish people and reading up about their messianic expectations? Did they go home still overwhelmed with joy and wonder, and ponder these things in their hearts like Luke tells us Mary did? Did they go home and eventually forget?

Was it hard to get home after a journey like that, where everything changed, and find that home was still very much the same? Sometimes in the church we talk about mountaintop experiences, moments like the transfiguration where there is clarity and wonder and connection all at once. At the end of the transfiguration, the disciples go back down the mountain. At the end of this time with Jesus, the magi go home.

Coming down from mountaintop experiences for me is usually quiet and sad. Instead of being continually lifted up by the highs I’ve experienced, coming back down after them is jarring and often painful. A friend this year had “post-wedding depression.” All of the hopes and dreams she had, and all of the work she’d gone through (and all of the Pinterest projects she’d completed) gave her life focus and meaning. The day itself was amazing! Everything came into place, everyone was together, and the party went on and on. Even the next day there was brunch and laughter. But after that, there was packing the car, and going home, and unpacking the car and figuring out what to eat for dinner. (The honeymoon did not immediately follow the wedding.)

And it was hard. Her descriptions of the lostness that came after the wedding had such resonance in my life. After intense focus on a project, or after an experience that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, or – let’s be real here – after I finish a book I really really like, I wander around a little bit lost for a while, not quite able to figure out what way to turn or what I’m really wanting to DO next.

If they magi existed, and if they followed an errant star, and if they came to Bethlehem and met Mary and Jesus, and if they were filled with joy and wonder, and warned in a dream to go home by another route – then what happened when they got home? Was it a bit anticlimactic after the journey? Was it a tiny bit boring? What were they going to do NEXT? Did they find themselves wishing they’d gone back to Herod just for the excitement of finding out what would have happened? Did they wander again, following another hunch, soon thereafter, in hopes of finding something meaningful again?

I think perhaps the ebbs and flows of life are meant to include some aimlessness, some post-project depression, some sadness when something is complete and intense focus dissipates. It feels natural. Life isn’t a really really long marathon! There are down times, and in those we are subconsciously deciding on the next course we’ll follow. We don’t thrive with constant intensity (although some of us seek it anyway!) As humans we do best when something REALLY draws us in – and then lets us go so that something else can. We need the thrill of the intensity and the let-down that comes afterward.

Two roads diverge often. We end up at crossroad’s well never get to come back to, regularly. May we be wise enough to stand in them from time to time, even in melancholy, and consider the next stages of our journey. Perhaps we’ll decide to follow another road.

Perhaps it will make a difference. And if not, at least the moment of looking and wondering will serve to steady us on the roads we choose and give us a chance to listen to the whisperings of the Divine. Thanks be to God for that. Amen

–

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

January 3, 2016