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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

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February 5, 2023
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3Gafney, 53.

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

5Dreitcer, 13.

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

February 5, 2023

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January 29, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Everything Is Good” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and 1 Timothy 4:1-6, 9-10

I was trained in process theology, which focuses on genuine free-will and understands God to be all-good and all-knowing, but NOT all powerful (because that would defy free will). These days I mostly don’t think about process theology, it just sort of flows through me without awareness. But then I came upon the line from 1 Timothy, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.”1

Reading that, my heart leapt for joy! An affirmation of the goodness of creation! YES! A reminder to focus on the good! YES! A move towards gratitude, as spiritual practice, YES!

And about that far into my excitement, I found the counter-narrative building up in me. Because there are weapons of mass destruction and addictive recreational drugs and I’m not willing to go so far as to claim they are good. Now, if you want an easy way out of this, you can say simply that “everything created by GOD is good” and not everything created by humans. Truthfully, that’s probably a good distinction.

But, this is where I find I’m truly a process theologian. Process theology says that any capacity that exists can be used for good or for evil, and that as capacity increases so too does the capacity for good and in equal measure the capacity for evil. So, power. Any given power can be used for good, or for evil. To go back to my prior examples, we might think of the scientific and engineering minds as well as the money that was used to create weapons of mass destruction and that those resources could have been used quite differently – maybe to modernize the electrical grid or enable tree planting to fight climate change or… all sorts of things. The capacities can be used for God. God intends them for good. But we are free to choose how we use them.

Unfortunately, quite often, people choose to use power and capacity for evil. The reasons are wise ranging, and quite often those doing great harm are doing so because they were also harmed, but the truth is that there is a lot of bad stuff out there. And society is rife with collective horrible decisions.

And, I think there is wisdom still in 1 Timothy’s “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.” Because I think God did create everything for good, and nothing for rejection – and WE have choices about how we use stuff.

In Dr. Gafney’s reflections on this text she said, “The Epistle is highlighting how very much opposite of the spirit and teaching of Christ are the false doctrines they are rebuking; doctrines that limit and exclude.”2 Now, this argument is powerful and beautiful, and should be held carefully.

My specific concern is the decision made by the early Church to not require followers of Jesus to follow kosher guidelines. I think that decision was fine, but I also think it it is a faithful choice for Jewish people to be kosher, and for religions to have dietary codes. I’m reminded of a young friend who kept kosher, and was willing to talk about it who said, “It is what I can do to remind myself regularly of God.” Beautiful.

Which I guess is to say that religious dietary codes can be good.

And lack of them can be good.

The capacity of all things to be good makes space for us to consider what it means to use any given thing FOR good. How can we sanctify something in how we choose to use it? 1 Timothy says, “For it is sanctified by God’s word and prayer,” but I think there is a little bit more to it.

If everything is made to be good then even the most basic parts of our lives are sanctified. What does it mean to eat with an awareness of the goodness of the food we have, and God’s blessings on it? Does that change the pace at which we eat, the presence of prayers of grace, the amount of attention we give to the flavors of our food? Does it impact what we choose to eat when we are thinking of eating itself as a potential moral good for ourselves and the world?

What does it mean to think of sleep as GOOD? How does that impact how we approach it?

Or, this was a recent insight for me, what does it mean to think of exercise as “the opportunity to move with joy?” (Because if I’m honest I have mostly thought of it as “the best way to quickly punish my body for the fact that I sit too much.”) I think maybe thinking of exercise as a good gift from God can create some pretty radical changes for me.

Or, what does it mean to notice the goodness and sanctity of … the chance to sing a hymn together, or the joy of a cup of tea, or a random meeting on the sidewalk? The simple little things that make up our days and our weeks, what if they ARE all meant for good?

There was a line in a commentary on Ezra that I read in preparation for out Bible Study that really stood out for me. The author, Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi who is a Rabbi, points out that Ezra is not focused on the work of heroes but rather on the work of the people as a whole. She says, “Success is not a return to glory but the sanctification of the mundane, ‘daily, prose-bound, routine.’”3

Sanctification: making something holy. So “success” is finding the holy in the mundane.

Now, the things that have done great harm to us or others – we need to be clear those were not God’s intent – but what if God is working with us to transform them anyway? To bring healing and to make it possible to bring whatever good is able to come out of even great harm. (From Zechariah, “I will change their shame into praise.”)

What if God is up to all kinds of good all the time all around us and all we have to do is notice?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Isn’t that wonderful?

Amen

1 1 Timothy 4:4,Translation by Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 49.

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, p. 50.

3 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988), p. 187.

January 29, 2023

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January 19, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Rebuilding after Trauma” based on Psalm 18:2-11, 16-19 and Isaiah 62:1-7

I picked the wordiest readings ever this week. They’re awfully hard to keep in focus. I’m sorry. They’re just so lovely though, that I couldn’t help myself. They are texts that talk about rebuilding after traumatic events, about God’s power and grace being enough to bring hope when it looks lost. They have imagery of healing and regrowth.

They talk again and again about salvation and delivery, and it seems like a good time to claims those words in their Biblical strength and power. Salvation comes from the same root as “salve.” To be saved is to be healed. Delivery has connotations of birth and passing through a narrow place to get to safety and wholeness. Both words are used throughout the Bible to indicate God’s actions for God’s people. God moves the people to healing, to wholeness, to safety. God liberates. God heals. God creates safe places for liberation and healing to occur.

If you, like me, have had a little bit too much exposure to the Christian fundamentalist narrative that salvation is about being saved from hell, I invite you to lay it down. Let it go. We aren’t talking about that.

In fact, Isaiah is talking about restoring the community of ancient Israel. Piecing together those who had been left behind in the unprotected lands with those who had been force marched into exile, and finding connection and wholeness again. Isaiah is talking about the horrors of violence, the battles and destruction of Jerusalem and that they DO NOT GET to define the people any longer. “No more shall your land be called Devastated; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her”. Wow!

The Psalm presents itself as being more about an individual, which it may be. Sometimes it is hard to tell in the Bible if an individual is an individual or a way about talking about a group as a whole. It doesn’t really matter though, the truths hold in it either way. The Psalmist expresses trust in God “The Rock Who Gave Me Birth is my rock” and then goes on pretty quickly to mention that things are not going well. “The snares of death encompassed me”, etc. The Psalmist called out to God for help, and experienced God listening and responding.

I wonder if there is something important there. The Psalm goes into quite a lot of detail about the strength of God’s response. God heard, God cared, God responded – and the earth SHOOK. When any of us is responding to trauma, being reminded that God is, that God cares, and that God can help matters a lot. There is isolation and powerlessness that keep trauma in place, but the reminder of God’s presence and care can change that reality quite dramatically.

Finally, the Psalmist says God simply plucked them up out of the danger and set them down somewhere safe, ending with “she delivered me because she delights in me.” What a profound conclusion.

A definition of trauma that I find quite useful is, “Exposure to an event which was perceived as intensely threatening to mind, body, or spirit, accompanied by feelings of helplessness, powerlessness and horror.”1 You’ll note there are two part to this definition: a threatening event and a sense that one couldn’t do anything about it. It is also worth noting that the PERCEPTION of the threat is the key, not the reality of it. AND that the threat can be to mind, body, or spirit.

Trauma is incredibly common in our lives. Adverse Childhood Experience Studies look at 10 common traumatic experiences (abuse, neglect, family dysfunction) and find that 60-65% of adults experienced at least one traumatic event in childhood. So MOST people. Most people were seriously harmed in their childhoods. The prevalence of childhood trauma has dramatic effects on physical and mental health over the course of a lifetime. And, of course, traumatic events occur in adult lives too.

A particularly notable one would be a global pandemic. Where there are threats to physical well-being in the form of the virus, AND mental and spiritual well-being in the form of separation.

Clearly, there are a wide variety of experiences in the pandemic and experiences of the pandemic. Some people have experienced far more trauma in the pandemic than others. Yet, we have each experienced some trauma, and we have had a COLLECTIVE trauma. It may even be that we are still in the midst of experiencing collective trauma. (I think it is hard to tell for sure.)

While trauma has incredible impact on bodies, minds, and souls, it is important to pay attention as well to resiliency factors. Because the impact of trauma is CHANGED by the presence of resilience. Things like: supportive friends, ways to engage with community, people to look up to, a sense of purpose, feeling valued, a sense of competency, opportunities for play. In my reading on trauma and resilience I’ve been struck by how UTTERLY IMPERATIVE mirroring is.

Mirroring are ways that people consciously or subconsciously reflect or “mirror” the emotions and feelings and aspirations of another. This has the impact of validating, accepting, and showing love for that person. (Generally when it comes to anger or outbursts mirroring is less useful, but naming emotions can still help a lot.)2 Mirroring gets a lot of attention in terms of parenting, but let’s be real for a moment: for the adults in the room, a lot of life is about self-parenting ourselves and supporting others in their capacity to do the same. We have have emotions, feelings, aspirations and needs, and sometimes we all need some help in accepting them and finding them valid. Sometimes we can do it ourselves (regulating!) sometimes we do it best with others (co-regulating!) and most of the time its a mix.

Mirroring and regulating feel central to these Biblical passages about delivery from trauma, salvation after trauma, restoration to a full and abundant life. In Isaiah God names the ways the community feels. It is heard and acknowledged. It isn’t dismissed. God is even named as “God who sees.” The ways the community has experienced the exile are spoken by GOD. The hope doesn’t come out of the abstract, it meets the people where they are.

In the Psalm first we hear the distress of the one who is struggling and then we hear the ways God responds. Perhaps you need to hear this too, so keeping in mind the traumas of the past 3 years or so, see how it feels to hear this as God’s response to the struggles you’ve lived through:

Then the earth shuddered and quaked;

the foundations also of the mountains trembled

and were shaken because of her anger.

Smoke went up from her mouth;

burning coals blazed forth from her.

She spread out the heavens, and descended;

thick darkness was under her feet.

She mounted up on a cherub and flew;

she soared upon the wings of the wind.

She made darkness her veil around her,

her canopy dark waters and thick clouds.

She reached down from on high, she took me;

she drew me out of the multitude of water.

She delivered from from my strong enemy,

and from those who hate me;

for they were too mighty for me.

Wow!

Well, I feel less alone, and less frightened by my finitude with God responding like THAT! (Also, I rather like that the “enemies” aren’t attacked, rather the Psalmist is simply placed out of their reach.)

The Psalmist brings fear and heartache, and FEELS God mirroring, responding, helping, empowering, and bringing them to safety. The whole earth shakes and God starts the process of rebuilding their life after the trauma.

In Isaiah, too, the trauma is acknowledged in the mirroring, and other healing starts too. There is dreaming, hoping, reframing, renaming, reconnecting. Trauma happens in human lives, individually and collectively, but trauma isn’t the last word. God doesn’t give up on us when we’re struggling, God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, and helps us find the skills to regulate. God works to bring us to safe places. God delights in us, EVEN when we are broken by the trauma of our lives.

We don’t have to be healed, or whole, or trauma free to be loved. God doesn’t expect that of us. God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, loves and hopes. Trauma doesn’t have the final word, love and hope do. That is, God does. Amen

1 https://resolutioncounselling.ca/resolution-articles/nature-impacts-trauma/

2Adapted from https://www.enlivenminds.org/parental-mirroring/

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 22, 2023

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January 15, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Foolish and Wise" based on Isaiah 52:1-10 and 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Again and again I find myself at the website for the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and reading over the principles of Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Every time I read them, I learn. Every time I read them I notice again how deeply rooted Rev. Dr. King was in following Jesus, and in the wisdom of other traditions that also teach nonviolence.

This week, the principle that jumped out was number 2: Nonviolence Seeks to Win Friendship and Understanding.

The outcome of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation1

It is always worth reviewing the idea of the Beloved Community, central as it is to Rev. Dr. King’s thinking. The Commission on Religion and Race wrote about this for us, “Philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce first conceived the Beloved Community concept; later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr popularized it during the Civil Rights Movement. Rev. Dr. King envisioned that the Beloved Community to be a global movement where the agape love of God would be the driving force to redemption and reconciliation and a place where all people can share in the abundance of wealth in the world. In the Beloved Community, all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and dehumanization are eradicated and countered by a more inclusive, interdependent existence of people who live in non-violent harmony with one another.”2

That is, the Beloved Community is formed from the truths of our 1 Corinthians passage. The ways to move from systems of power-over, oppression, and hierarchy don’t tend to come from those who hold the power, engage in the oppression, and maintain the hierarchy. Rather, the wisdom to see how things work, why things don’t work, and what could be better tends to come from those disempowered, oppressed, and on the bottom of a hierarchy. The ones lowborn, “foolish” in the ways of the world, insignificant, weak. They’re the ones most likely to listen to God, to respond to God’s urgings, to find new ways.

The nonviolent social movement of Rev. Dr. King, Ghandi, and Jesus are most notable to me, in that they sought to eliminate oppression with LOVE. They did not seek to eliminate the oppressors, only the oppression. They wanted to CHANGE relationships, not stop them. They saw that there is real power in community, in connection, in solidarity, and in peace. World changing power, and they all used it. Not power over, but power with.

There is the vision of the kindom, or the Beloved Community. The way of God in the world is not in power over, but power with. It is in humanizing ALL. It is in sharing abundant resources. It is in togetherness.

This, I think, is also the real meaning of the salvation discussed in Isaiah. The historical idea was of return, hope, freedom, and connection. And, when it is looked at carefully, it is clear that God is at work to move towards peace – towards wholistic well-being of all and each, towards joy – for all, towards comfort, towards freedom from oppression.

God’s dreams get spoken a little differently in each time and place, but in Isaiah and Paul, Jesus and Ghandi, Rev. Dr. King hopefully in each of us, they resonate with the same underlying melodies, hopes, and passions. God’s passion is for ALL to be WELL, together.

As you may remember, Rev. Dr. King talked about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism as “forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”3 About poverty, he said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”4

Heavens. It is even less “new” now than when he said it. The existence of poverty within our nation is a choice our nation has made about it’s values, a choice that the Bible CLEARLY disagrees with. We could house everyone, and we could do it for LESS money than it costs us NOT to house everyone, but we choose not to. We could feed everyone, and the impact on our society as a whole would be profound, but we choose not to. We could provide affordable, excellent healthcare for everyone, once again at lower costs than our current system, but we choose not to.

As Ms. Bryce Covert summarized in an NYT opinion piece entitled “There is a Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things,” this summer,

“In a seminal 2001 paper, the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote tried to answer this very question: Why doesn’t this country have a welfare system that looks like the ones in European countries, progressively taxing those with the most wealth to redistribute resources to those with the least? Economic differences, they concluded, don’t explain it. But they did find that “racial fragmentation” has played a “major role” in keeping us from these policies in a way it hasn’t elsewhere. They also found that while Europeans see the poor as members of their own group who are merely unfortunate, Americans see them as lazy “others.” American voters are less likely to demand that their leaders pass policies that help the least well-off. “Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately Black, unappealing to many voters,” they concluded.5

That is, our choices to allow people to struggle in poverty are inter-related with racism. Like Rev. Dr. King said.

The way I see it, at the center of all the evils and violence is the dehumanization of others. Which means that every SINGLE movement toward compassion is a movement away from violence, away from evil, towards the beloved community. Compassion MATTERS, for each of us, for all of us, and for the world we want to make. For the world we are making with God.

I subscribe to a newsletter from Emily Nagoski, who with her sister wrote “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” which I would put on a required reading list for humans if I had the power to make such a thing. Last week she entitled her email newsletter, “Burnout: You don’t have to Wait for the Revolution to Feel Better.”6

Her words were profound to me, and so I’m going to share them with you. She says that there are solutions to burnout, and they are neither the revolution nor self care. BUT RATHER, compassion. Speaking of society as a body, she says:

We help the body learn not to treat parts of itself as the enemy.

Just because a cell in our social body is different from us doesn’t make it “foreign” or a threat; its difference means that it plays a role in our social body that we ourselves cannot play, and so we must protect it, because our own wellbeing within this social body depends on every different cell sustaining its wellbeing. We can’t soothe the inflammation of the social body by attacking any part of it.

No, the cure for burnout can’t be some fantasy of revolution, nor is it the finger-trap of self-care. It is simply care; it is all of us turning toward each other with kindness and compassion. When we see each other’s exhaustion and overwhelm, we offer support without judgment. When we notice our own sense of inadequacy, we allow others to witness it and love us anyway. The “cure” is each of us declining to let the forces of racist, sexist, capitalist oppression stop us from loving the hell out of one other, come what may.

…

And if you’re worried I’m saying, “Don’t try to change the system; let’s just be nice to each other while the world burns,” I invite you to think bigger. Think outside the boring dynamics of Force A acting against Force B and so Force B retaliates with overwhelming power. Imagine instead Force B transforms into a cloud, saturating Force A with peace until it deliquesces and releases us into the natural, soft flow of being human.

Audre Lorde says: community built on honoring our differences. She calls us to “recognize difference as a crucial strength.” She says,

“Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community does not mean shedding our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

The cure is not “self-care.” The cure is simply care — all of us, caring for each other, by honoring our differences and loving one another because of them.

That’s it, dear ones. That’s how we do God’s work, how we build the kindom, how we live the Beloved Community, how we follow Jesus, how we continue the work of Rev. Dr. King. We love the hell out of each other, we simply care, we honor our differences and love one another. May God help us do it! Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

2General Commission on Religion and Race. https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-beloved-community

3 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

4Ibid.

5 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/racism-paid-leave-child-care.html

6 https://emilynagoski.substack.com/p/burnout-you-dont-have-to-wait-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=287493&post_id=95085447&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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Untitled

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

December 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But for now, Phew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 25, 2022

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“Peace” based on Matthew 1:18-25

December 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

We have a lot of phrases about
peace in our faith tradition. Jesus is called the “prince of
peace.” We speak of the “peace that passes understanding.” A
sung blessing offers the line, “deep peace of the running waves to
you.” Songs and prayers ask God to “grant us peace.” We often
sing, “Peace be with you ‘til we meet again,” and we greet each
other with “peace be with you.” We yearn, collectively, for
“world peace.”

I’ve been trained in the
knowledge that the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, refers to holistic
well being – body, mind, and spirit – of the individual and the
community. It is more than the absence of war. It is the absence of
needs, the adequate distribution of resources so that no one has to
try to get what they need via violence.

In this way, shalom, peace, is
deeply integrated with the kindom of God.

This week I’ve been struck at
how RELATIVE peace is – both internally and externally. I think
I’ve often been distracted by the wondrous language about peace in
our tradition, and thought of peace as some perfect and excellent
thing. But that assumption has distracted me from a whole lot of the
incremental gifts of peace.

The many people in our church
and our society who have lived through trauma have fairly constant
alerts in their bodies and minds to remain vigilant, stay safe, LOOK
OUT! What looks like peace for someone in a constant state of alert
may be a relatively safe place or person that allows a few of the
alarm bells within to slow down. Which is to say that what looks
like relative peace for some would be REALLY HIGH agitation for
others. Yet, still, increased peace is a gift for all those who
experience it. Peace in the midst of trauma.

There is a famous story of
Christmas 1914, in the midst of World War I, when soldiers singing
Christmas hymns in the trenches started singing back and forth to
each other across the “no man’s land” eventually leading to
soldiers experiencing a Christmas peace and exchanging gifts and
laughter. Peace in the midst of war.

I often think of a young mother
I knew by being her pastor, who shared that her life was full with a
full time job and the needs of young children. She spoke of her
commute time as the most peaceful part of her life, and savored it as
a time to connect with the Divine. Peace in the midst of a
burstingly full life.

This week Matthew gives us a
look at Mary’s pregnancy through the eyes of Joseph. Mary is
vulnerable, as a pregnant engaged woman who wasn’t pregnant from her
fiancé. Joseph has a lot of power here, he can publicly shame her
and her family, which would most likely result in Mary being removed
from her family so they can regain some status. His original plan,
to let her go quietly, seems aimed at letting the father of her baby
marry her. It is aimed at respecting everyone involved. Of course,
then he gets new information and changes course, no longer assuming
another man needed the space to become the father of that man’s
child.

I adore the way this translation
speaks of Joseph, “Joseph her husband was a just man and unwilling
to shame her, he wanted to divorce her secretly.” I find myself
thinking that Joseph was a man who knew peace within. Either he
wasn’t personally offended by Mary’s pregnancy, or he was able to
hold that in perspective and not wish to retaliate. His aim was not
violence or harm, but rather everyone’s well-being. Peace.

As I’ve considered the factors
that lead to peace within, I’ve been struck at how mundane they are.
Like most things – athletic skills, musical talent, etc, – there
are people with natural connection to peace, and there are people who
nurture their receptivity to peace, and while both matter, the work
done to nurture receptivity to peace ends up mattering the most over
time.

We have been in the midst of
highly trying times for many years now. I tend to think back to the
2016 election cycle as the beginning of the escalation of tension and
anxiety, but you may place it elsewhere. Even if you want to place
it at the beginning of the pandemic, we are YEARS into what our
bodies have probably experienced as a “war.” I say war because
the stress levels have been escalated, and very few things have
helped us bring them back down.

Some of you, thanks be to God,
have found life-giving ways to reconnect with peace, wholeness, and
the Divine. I’m of the opinion that walking in nature is one of the
best practices for this, and a lot of you seem to agree. You have
found ways to connect with each other and loved ones, you’ve found
creative expressions, you’ve done meditation or prayer practices,
you’ve looked for beauty, you’ve been still in the face of your awe,
you’ve PLAYED. I can see the differences in us from a year ago, and
I can see that God is working to cultivate peace in us AND that we
are working on receiving those gifts from God.

My exclusive point today is an
encouragement to keep nurturing your receptivity to God’s peace. I’m
happy to chat about it with you more, to think about what it looks
like in you. I think we can look at the example of Joseph to see how
peace within a person impacts those around them. I want to be more
like that, and I suspect you may too. May God grant us peace, and
may WE prepare ourselves to receive it. Amen

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

December 18, 2022

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“Joy” based on Luke 1:46-56

December 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

Some of you weren’t here last
week, and quite likely most of you have been through enough this week
that the nuances of last week’s sermon are no longer front and
center. (Most? All? It’s OK.)

Last week we lit the Advent
Candle of Love, and we looked at the example of Elizabeth’s loving
words to her young cousin Mary. Mary was engaged, pregnant, and
vulnerable. Her pregnancy looked like proof of infidelity,
everything in her life was likely in an uproar, and her cousin
greeted her with words that changed everything. They celebrated
Mary, they exclaimed over Mary, they reframed Mary’s shame, and
painted her instead as a a person committed to God’s faithful acts in
the world – even at high cost. The words showed that Elizabeth saw
her, loved her, and helped her let go of her fear and her shame.

Truth be told though, the Luke
reading cut off right in the middle of the scene last week.
Elizabeth greets Mary – and it was extraordinary. BUT, the next
lines are Mary’s response to Elizabeth, and they make a lot of sense
to read together as one conversation.

After Elizabeth wiped away
Mary’s shame and made room for love, Mary responded with her words of
praise for God, ones that are so famous they’re named. Mary’s words
are “The Magnificat,” called so for the opening line about
magnifying the Holy One.

Now, most scholars agree that
Luke 1 is a creation of the early Christian community, maybe even of
the author of Luke itself. What I find really remarkable about that
is that Luke has so much compassion for these women, and such a
strong sense of what they would be going through. It gives me hope
that there were strong women’s voices within the Christian community
at that time, that the equalitarian nature of the Way of Jesus
continued long enough that women’s voices were actually being heard
in the ways these stories were told. Or, maybe, Luke was simply an
outstandingly compassionate human, able to see beyond the bounds of
his own education and gender. Either option is really lovely, and
I’m really grateful for the ways these stories are told, so that
there is INCREDIBLE truth and wisdom in them. Luke and/or his
community, and his later editors cared about Mary and Elizabeth, not
just as wombs, but as humans with their own struggles and needs.

Thanks be to God for these
stories.

And, truly, thanks be to God for
the ones who thought enough about Mary to find words for this hymn of
praise to God that fit who she was as a person and a parent. They
are profound words.

They are also PROFOUNDLY joyful.
Mary is praising God, for being God. Mary knows her place in the
world, and it is not the top. She is awed that God would work with
her to do important things, and SEES herself as being “lowly” and
lifted up by God’s work with her. I’m also stuck that while the
first few verses name Mary’s awe at God’s work in her life, she moves
on quickly to simply her delight in God’s own self. She celebrates
God’s loving-kindness, constancy, strength, willingness to turn
upside down the powers and privileges of the world, to lift up the
lowly, to fill up the hungry, to offer care to those in need of it.

Mary’s song is a song of joy for
a God who feels close at hand in her life and in history, the past,
the present, and the future, the one who brings hope, the one who
makes it possible for her to face her own daunting circumstances.
She expresses JOY at being a partner with God in God’s work EVEN
THOUGH the circumstances were so far from ideal for her.

And I believe her words of
praise for God were a response to the words Elizabeth spoke to her.
As Elizabeth wiped away her shame and made space for Mary to
experience love, Mary’s life-light was able to emerge fully, and that
came out as PURE JOY.

It is hard (really really hard)
to fight through our shame to get to joy. But when the shame goes,
OH the things that can emerge!

I’ve been thinking a lot about
shame in the past few weeks, largely because focusing on the story of
Mary doesn’t give me any other option. Mary fits into a very long
cultural tradition that values female virginity, seeks to control
female sexuality, and generally treats women as if their only value
is in their capacity to provide womb access to the man who owns that
access. If she fails – because she is raped, because the couple is
infertile, or for any other reason, SHE is shamed.

This is one of the few times
when I don’t think the Biblical needs much contextual help. History
has changed, but not so much that we can’t follow that one.

This is why I find Elizabeth’s
words so powerful, when she compares Mary to other Biblical heroines
who were in compromising situations but were not defined by them.

I also have been thinking about
what shame looks like today. Obviously there is still an
over-abundance of shame around sex and sexuality. But we like to
make things complicated in our society today – we have a tendency
to make standards so contradictory and impossible that everyone can
find something to be ashamed about. There is shame for having too
much sex, or too little, for being too focused on it, or not enough,
for being sexually interested in the “wrong” person (or type, or
gender), or for being asexual, … for example.

And, there is shame for those
who have been assaulted, harassed, raped, or abused. This is some of
the strongest shame, and some of the most problematic.

For anyone holding sexual shame,
I invite you to this powerful reality: you are like Mary, the
mother of Jesus.

And I pray there are people like
Elizabeth in your life who will help you reframe what you’ve
experienced and find your own power in your story. So you can find
your joy!

In our society, though, sexual
shame is just one component. It seems to me that there are almost as
many sources of shame as there are ways we categorize each other.
Existing within capitalism, we have a societal narrative that poverty
is shameful. But, truthfully, we also know there is a shame in being
wealthy too – that to gain too much is to take it from others, to
have too much is to refuse to use it to help others. And, somehow,
people in the middle can feel shame BOTH WAYS.

Which is how a lot of things
work. Our society acts as if there is shame in struggling in school,
but also shames those who do too well in school, and it manages to
fall both ways on those in the middle. Or there is a story that
there is shame in different bodies – heights, weights, abilities,
dis-abilities, colors, hair types, noses.

And, let’s also mention the
shame around relationship status, where one might experience shame
for being single, or marrying too quickly, or being divorced, or
remarrying at the wrong time, or having kids or not having kids or
staying home with kids or not staying home with kids or having too
many kids or too few kids or kids the wrong way or at the wrong time.

Our society is ripe with ways to
shame us, to tell us we’re wrong, to make us squirm. It manages to
land on everyone, although not at all equally, and causes untold
damage, most of which is invisible.

I suspect the shame is aimed at
controlling us and getting us to buy things, a population overcome
with its own failures is less likely to notice how it can seek
justice for each other, and is less able to connect and build
relationships that transform lives. And, we’re all a part of it too
– as we are overwhelmed by our sense of shame, we tend to try to
lower the anxiety of it all by naming what we see in other and…
passing it along. Ick.

But, this story of Elizabeth and
Mary is a profound example of the powers that can TRANSFORM shame.
Elizabeth saw Mary’s shame, referenced it, reframed it, and
celebrated Mary instead of shaming her. That’ll change things.

Last week I called us to be like
Elizabeth, wiping way shame to make space for God’s gifts of love
(and this week I’ll add joy.) But one of you, in response, reminded
me that before we can be like Elizabeth wiping away shame, we need to
face our shame like Mary did.

And now, I need to go back and
admit that Elizabeth had her fair share of shame too. At the
beginning of Luke she was a childless woman, which would have been
understood to be a “useless” woman. (Blech.) But something had
happened in Elizabeth where her shame become an opening for
compassion instead of a form of embitterment.

What a beautiful thing that is,
when our wounds, our shame, our struggles can open our hearts, break
open our compassion, make space in us for the struggles and shames of
others. That thing that can happen is a form of grace. It is an act
of God.

It is an act of God that comes
in many forms – sometimes the grace within us starts in awe and
wonder, sometimes from another person offering it to us, sometimes
directly from God, sometimes from the wisdom of a stranger – maybe
through a book or podcast, sometimes even I think it just comes from
within when the strength of our spirit rejects the narrative of our
brokenness.

Even though shame gets passed
around this world, and magnified, SO TOO does grace. I believe that
this is a place where good theology is a source of grace, and thus of
hope, love, and joy. So let me say some things as a person of faith,
a religious leader, a pastor, a person who seeks to follow Jesus’s
ways of knowing God:

God is not ashamed of you.
Shame is not a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to eliminate your shame.
God loves you and even LIKES
you, and has compassion for you.
Grace is a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to show you the power of grace in the world and in your
life.
Your body, your desires, your
gender, your abilities, your lack of abilities, your strength, your
weakness, your relationship status, your work status, your income,
and your resume are NOT what make you worthy or unworthy.
You are INHERENTLY worthy.
You are a beloved child of God.
God wants wonderful things for
you.
God wants wonderful things for
everyone.
You can’t exempt yourself from
God’s desire for goodness for you.

And finally

You aren’t going to shame
yourself into being better.

So, dear ones, to the extent
that it is in your capacity to do so, let go of your shame, and then
let God help you let go of it some more. Let grace in.

Because when you do, you may
find that your song of JOY is even more profound than Mary’s! Thanks
be to God! Amen

December 11, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Love” based on Genesis 17:15-22 and Luke 1:39-45

December 4, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’ve
always loved this little interlude in Luke 1, when Mary goes to visit
Elizabeth. I recognize it to be an early Christian creation, aimed
at connecting John the Baptist and Jesus, while putting them in their
correct order, but there were lots of ways that could have been done
and I appreciate this one.

Now,
I’ve always thought of it as … sweet, nurturing, maternal.
Elizabeth is OLD, a la Sarah, but pregnant, and it is astounding and
wonderful, and it seems Elizabeth has waited a life time for this.
From within the story, it seems likely that Mary was struggling, was
sent away for her pregnancy so people at home wouldn’t know, and was
sent to an older cousin who could be trusted to keep her safe. Maybe
even one known to be a little less judgmental than others. Or
perhaps just one known to be able to feed another mouth. Who knows??

But
I love this idea of this older pregnant woman and this younger
pregnant woman spending months side by side, experiencing new things
in their bodies, developing a deeper trust, maybe even discussing
what God was up to around them. It has ended up being a model for me
of the value of retreat, the value of mentors, the value of
connections with others who can hold me up when I’m vulnerable.

I
love this story.

This
week I learned that I’ve missed the majority of it’s power. I need
to give some context warnings here about violence, murder, and sexual
violence. It is always OK to leave, and stop listening when it isn’t
OK to hear.

Elizabeth
speaks a blessing to Mary, it is particularly familiar to those who
have prayed The Hail Mary, which says:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the
Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of
God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our
death.
Amen.

Elizabeth’s
words are, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb…” (Those are the ones picked up verbatim
in The Hail Mary) “From where does this visit come to me? That the
mother of my sovereign comes to me? Look! As soon as I heard the
sound of your greeting in my ear, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Now blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of
these things spoken to her by the Holy One.”

As
Dr. Wilda Gafney says, “Elizabeth’s greeting comes from scriptures
she well could have known: Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They invite
speculation on her contact with them orally or in writing…
Elizabeth’s proximity to the temple and its liturgies and her own
priestly lineage may have increased the likelihood of her literacy.”¹
So, like you do, I looked up Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They may
not be what you’d expect.

The
Judges passage, in context is:

Most blessed of women be
Jael,
   the wife of Heber the Kenite,
   of
tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him
milk,
   she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.

She put her hand to the
tent-peg
   and her right hand to the workmen’s
mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
   she crushed
his head,
   she shattered and pierced his temple.

He sank, he fell,
   he lay still at her
feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
   where he
sank, there he fell dead.

Judith
13:18 is more similar than you might think, “Then Uzziah said to
her, ’O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all
other women on earth, and blessed by the Lord God, who created
the heavens and the earth, who has guided you to cut off the head of
the leader of our enemies.”

This
is… not as cozy as I was thinking. And, I’m thinking for lots of
you, these are not familiar stories and you might not have any idea
whatsoever is going on with the Bible celebrating murder.

So,
let’s at the very least make ourselves a little bit familiar with
the stories of these women to whom Mary is being compared. First
Jael, from the book of Judges. The book of Judges tells some of the
pre-history of the Ancient Nation of Israel, describing a 400 year
period when the tribes mostly functioned on their own, and when there
were outsider attacks, God raised up leaders – called Judges – to
fight them off and protect the people. One such judge was a woman
named Deborah, and she worked with a general named Barak when an
attack came from the Canaanites led by their general Sisera. Deborah
is called a prophetess as well as a judge, and is presented as
capable and impressive.

Her
general Barak is scared because the Sisera and the Canaanites have
more impressive weapons than they do, so he asks Deborah to come with
him into the battle, believing that God would help keep HER safe and
thus keep him safe. Deborah responds that she’ll go, AND that while
he will “win” the glory will not go to him, but to a woman.

So,
the battle happens, the Israelites win, the Canaanites run away, and
the general is running off on his own trying to save his own life.
He come to the tents of the Kenites, likely a metal working or
artisan tribe with neutrality to both parties, particularly the tent
of Heber the Kenite, who is gone, and Jael the Kenite who is present.
Jael invites him in, makes him comfortable, gives him milk, stands
guard while he goes to sleep, and then drives a tent stake into his
head to kill him. When the General Barak comes after him, Jael shows
Barak Sisera’s body.

And
then Deborah and Barak sing a song of praise for the winning of the
battle and Jael’s part in it – which is where we get our verses
from Judges.

So,
Judith. I suspect you are even less likely to know her story, as the
book of Judith is considered part of the Apocrypha (that is,
Protestants don’t consider it part of the Bible). It is a novel,
written a century or two before Jesus, telling the story of Judith
who saves her village from the Assyrian General Holofernes. It is a
pretty good story, and I’m a little bit sorry to give you spoilers,
but my goal is to explain Elizabeth and Mary, so shrug. The
General was attacking Judith’s home town, and the Jews there had
brokered a 5 day peace plan, but the council was hemming and hawing
about what to do, so Judith took things into her own hands. She does
a lot of praying and asking for God’s help, and she dresses up
beautifully, lies to the army to say she is fleeing to the enemy army
for safety, makes it plain to the General that she is game for
seduction, and then when he seeks to do so, plies him with enough
alcohol that he passes out drunk, beheads him with his own sword,
steals his head, goes off with her maid to pray, and instead of
returning to the war camp, goes back to her village to tell them
she’d solved their problem. The town magistrate then speaks the
words we heard earlier, praising her and naming her as having
followed God’s guidance.

Now,
we need to take this one more step, back to Dr. Gafney for an
explanation of Elizabeth’s words, “Both forerunners of this
greeting are associated with bloody violence: Deborah’s war against
the Canaanites and Jael’s execution of Sisera, and an Assyrian siege
and Judith’s execution of Holofernes. Further, both Judith and Jael
are in sexually scandalous situations: attempted rape and assignation
and seduction. Mary’s own pregnancy is scandalous, hinting at sexual
infidelity. Elizabeth’s words provide transgenerational support and
comfort.”

That
is, if you were wondering why Jael would have murdered Sisera when
her people were at peace with him, the assumption underlying the
story is that he had or would attempt to rape her. Deborah ends up
celebrating that she didn’t end up having to seduce the general, but
is is CLEAR that she was going to do what needed to be done to save
her people.

These
women were fierce, to say the least. They were deadly. And, at the
same time, they were vulnerable. Jael was alone her in tent.
Deborah’s people were all at risk of death, and her actions to save
them put her at great risk – and alone in the general’s tent as
well. These women were praised as being “most blessed of women”
and “you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on
earth.” And they too had scandals. It is as if the scandals don’t
make them less worthy of the praise they received.

It
is as if what happened to Mary need not define her life either. It
is as if whatever the world may be saying about Mary, even if her
life is at risk because of the interpretation of infidelity, she is
being connected to some of the fiercest, most active women in the
Bible in protecting God’s people. It is as if Elizabeth is seeing
her scandal, and giving her a new way to see it. It is as if
Elizabeth’s words wipe away Mary’s shame and give her a new frame of
reference, one that has been repeated millions of times in history,
praising Mary, and her role in God’s plans.

Friends,
in a world that defines people by their scandals, a world that locks
people up for their worst moments (or presumed worst moments), a
world that cuts people of for mistakes, a world that remembers even
misspoken words – let us be Elizabeths. Let us see, and have the
power to reframe the shame people hold. Let us wipe away shame to
make room for love. Let us see the whole person, even the hero, in
the broken one. Let us remember the stories of the HUMANITY of God’s
people in the Bible, and make space for HUMANITY in each other and in
ourselves. Let us be Elizabeths, wiping away shame to make space for
love. Amen

1Wilda
Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
(New York, NY: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), page 7.

December 4, 2022

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