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March 3, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Hoped for Dignity” based on Acts 6:1-6 and 1 Corinthians 11:17-26

When I was a child I thought that the church was a holy place and that meant that the people who were there did good things, and good decisions were made there.

Growing up wasn’t particularly fun. Shaking off all those illusions was a lot of work. Now I know that the church is a holy place and that means people try to do good things and make decisions and sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.

These days I can read two passages about the early church bringing normal human dysfunction to shared meals and not even bat an eye. Of course normal human dysfunction happened in the early church! And the middle church! And the late church? Whatever we call ourselves now. Of course ways people didn’t see each other’s needs have always happened and of course that applied to people with enough resources not seeing those without enough resources well. People. That’s apparently how we work. Including in the church.

I’ve never been super fond of Paul’s “solution” in 1 Corinthians though. I’ve never understood why he recommended eating at home instead of sharing all the food that everyone brought. Luckily, we have our Acts reading too, one that feels so radical it seems like Jesus is sitting in the room making the recommendation himself.

So let’s focus on the Acts one. This is in the very early church when the followers of Jesus were functioning as one family in really practical ways. People sold everything they had and contributed the resources to the whole and were then utterly dependent on each other. Usually I read this part of Acts and just feel guilty that the modern church is such a weakened version of that commitment to community and shared livelihood.

But this passage shows that even in the VERY early church when people were radically committed to God, to following Jesus, and to each other there were still issues. And these issues were intersectional. The community of faith following Jesus in those days was still a part of Judaism, so all the followers of Jesus still knew themselves to be Jews. However, by the time of the early church, Judaism already had both a home base and a diaspora. Some Jewish people still lived in the land of their ancestors and spoke Hebrew and Aramaic, some came from families that had lived in other places and spoke primarily Greek. Maybe, even, most of them spoke each other’s languages but the “Hellenistic” and “”Hebrew” Jews refers mostly to where their families had settled.

In any case, while in the world at large being Hellenistic would have been a position of greater power, for the early church being Hebrew was a position of greater power and that meant that the Hellenistic Jews were LESS powerful. And, because humans … are kinda awful sometimes… that meant that the most vulnerable members of the Hellenistic Jews – the widows – suffered the most and weren’t getting enough FOOD.

Which is horrible, and infuriating, and also just so NORMAL.

The solution, I’d say, isn’t normal though. It isn’t normal in the world and it isn’t even normal for the church. Because the issue was brought to “the disciples” and they did something I’m not used to seeing church leaders do. They set a boundary and said “we aren’t capable of caring for this in addition to the things we’re already doing.” Which was incredibly healthy, especially when they said that AND came up with a plan to make sure it was cared for.

So then they told the community to find 7 people to care for the fair distribution of food. Which means that it was the whole community that did the really amazing next thing, not just the twelve disciples. The amazing thing they did was pick SEVEN men with HELLENISTIC names. One of whom we’re told was a convert to Judaism, so go diversity on that one.

And those seven men became the ones in charge of resources distribution. The words used as “wait tables” also have administrative connotations, and I suspect those are accurate.

In my years in the church I haven’t ever seen it happen that when a marginalized group reports structuralized mistreatment that they’re given all the power over the structure. Never. I’ve seen marginalized groups report structuralized mistreatment and they’ve been given space to speak, or they’ve been empowered to report on the problem, at times there are even spaces made for committees to be formed, and on occasion those committees are even mostly populated by those who have been marginalized.

But I’ve never seen the POWER HANDED OVER.

I’ve never seen the response, “This has been done poorly and the most vulnerable people aren’t being treated well? Then let’s fix it by making sure that those who are vulnerable have complete control over the resources people need, because they’ll be more attentive to distributing it fairly.”

Well, I’ve never seen it anywhere but right here. And this feels like a bigger miracle than those healing stories the gospels are full of. Did the early church really do this? Did they really trust God and follow Jesus this well? Did they actually invert the power structures of the world and trust the disempowered to fix the system?

Yes, yes, I know that it was 7 men and no women and definitely none of the widows. It is a miracle anyway. I’ve seen the church at large. Trust me.

Seriously, this gives me goosebumps.

Because I can imagine SO MANY objections to doing it this way. Right? “They’ll just keep all the food to themselves.” “Will the Hebrew widows be hungry now?” “What do those guys know about distributing resources anyway?” “This is hard work, it should be done by experts.” “What will we do if someday there isn’t enough food? Will they be able to handle it then?” “What kind of reporting are we expecting of these 7 to the 12 that it can be clear they’re being accountable?”

But that wasn’t what happened. 7 people were selected, they were blessed, they did the work, and Acts goes on to tell us some of the wonderful things these people did to build up the community and bring glory to God. The 12 went back to their important work, the 7 did their important work, everyone got the resources they needed, and more people were attracted to this radically equal Body of Christ.

And I think that means if it happened once, it could happen again!?!?!? It probably has, even if I haven’t heard about it. I suspect God is working on it happening RIGHT NOW in a whole bunch of places. This is a miracle of hope – that true dignity can be restored to God’s beloveds who are in this moment vulnerable and in need.

This amazing miracle is a part of the story we find at the table of God we extend at the communion table. So invite you to bring this miracle with us as move into sharing our resources with each other and sharing the bread and the cup. 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

March 3, 2024

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February 25, 2024
by Sara Baron

“We Hope for What We Do Not See” based on Jonah 2 and Romans 8:18-25

Despite my enjoyment of the “Who Did” song1, I haven’t preached about Jonah often. I may even have groaned when I looked at the texts for this week – even though I was the one to pick the essay from “We Cry Justice” and the accompanying recommended scriptures. I fear, though, that my avoidance of this text is unjustified.

Because, the issues I have are really quite silly. Here we go:

Whales don’t eat people. Nor do large fish.
Stomachs have acid, but not a lot of air, making them uninhabitable

You know, stuff like that.

But it turns out that taking a story literally and objecting to the pragmatic details is a really great way to miss powerful symbolism and deeper meaning within a story. So dismissing this story has only had the impact of keeping me from attending to the wisdom it has.

Which I noticed when I actually read the 2nd chapter of the book of Jonah, which is rather surprising. You may recall that in the first chapter Jonah was asked to to to Nineveh and tries to run away instead, gets on a ship going in the other direction, a storm comes up, Jonah suggests that the storm is God’s way of saying he isn’t listening, he suggests he be thrown into the sea, the sailors try not to do so, but finally they throw him in hoping the rest of them will live, and the storm quiets and the sailors are converted…. and then the whale did swallow Jonah. Down. 😉

So, given that chapter 2 is a prayer of Jonah from inside the whale, I think there would be just cause to assume that the prayer is either a lament that God put him in this horrid situation OR a plea for help, a request for forgiveness that results in Jonah being released from said whale? Right?

But it isn’t. The prayer of chapter 2 is a prayer of THANKSGIVING, whereby Jonah seems to have already concluded that the whale is a means of salvation, and is thanking God for God’s gracious actions. And that’s a place where I noticed that there is something useful in this story, because … well, I’m not sure I’d have gotten there.

I think that if I had a sense of God asking me to do something I vehemently didn’t want to do, that resulted in my very near drowning, and then gasping for air inside an enormous beast I couldn’t talk to or control, I’d have missed the memo that said enormous beast was a gift from God. Really. I mean, maybe, 3 days in, hungry, thirsty, and still wet but shockingly alive I might have figured it out, but that’s even kind of doubtful.

But Jonah’s prayer starts with “I called to the Lord in my distress and [God] answered me.”(NRSV 2a) So, it seems like he got it immediately. (We’re working with symbolism here people, let go of any assumption of factuality and let a good story be a good story.) And, the prayer is even specific, “The waters closed over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head…yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God.” (5,6d)

Wow. Jonah is sinking to the bottom of the sea, hopeless, and helpless, and then experiences God as lifting him up from the place of death, of bringing LIFE out of DEATH. And, I’m kinda familiar with THAT metaphor, right? But this is a different angle on it.

For me, the incongruities of life in the belly of the whale finally recede to make space for the questions of life and faith. When have we been floating down to the bottom of the sea, out of air, and out of hope? There are a lot of possible answers to that, right? And our lives are different, so our answers are different. Grief can feel like sinking to the bottom of the sea– anticipatory grief and the utter horror of waking up and realizing someone you love isn’t there Depression can feel like sinking to the bottom of the sea. Job loss and financial hardship can feel like sinking to the bottom of the sea. Loss of relationship. Abuse. Illness. Injury. Car accidents. Becoming unhoused. Failing. Flailing. A lot can feel like sinking to the bottom of the sea.

And what was the thing that picked you and kept you alive when you could no longer do so for yourself? Who or what was the whale? Was a phone call from a friend who cared? The arrival of flowers? The long, hard, careful work of a therapist? An unexpected welcome? An offer you couldn’t have anticipated? The life restoring work of first responded and medical professionals? Someone showing you the ropes you couldn’t figure out on your own? A good Samaritan?

How long did it take you to realize that you weren’t at the bottom of the sea anymore, and you could breath (if only a little bit), and there might be a hope for dry land again someday? Was it immediate? Did it take 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 years?

I wonder, if sometimes the darkness at the bottom of the sea is so scary that we block out the memory of it, but with it we then block the memory of being scooped up. Especially because being eaten by a whale does NOT immediately seem like rescue. Right!?! At the bottom of the sea, one condolence card can’t really make a difference – except sometimes it can. Sometimes knowing that someone else grieves with you, or sees you, or can share a memory that gives you a new story about a person you loved – sometimes that can be the whale.

Several years ago during a stewardship campaign, I was gifted the task of asking participants in some of our ministries what our ministries meant to them. As previously mentioned, I have a problematic tendency to be overly pragmatic, and while I delight in our breakfast program, I’m aware that it offers 1 meal out of an wished for 21 for a week. However, our guests assured me that the 1 meal matters.

Similarly, at that time we had Sustain Ministry, where we gave out soap and toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, and diapers to those who needed them. (Note: other organizations now do this work – thank God – and the need we were responding to then has changed.) I asked those waiting if they’d be willing to be interviewed, and I asked them why what we did mattered. One woman said that the resources we offered made the difference for her between being able to take care of her kids on her own and being financially forced back into an abusive relationship.

I loved Sustain ministry, but I thought it just made things a little easier for people whose lives were really hard. I didn’t know it was whale picking someone out of the bottom of the sea.

In the fall of 2021, after about a year and a half of ministry during a pandemic, while adjusting to being a new parent, and with a few other significant stressors in my work life, I was a hairsbreadth away from leaving ministry. Truthfully, I had been, on and off, for 2 years by that point. More so, I didn’t really know it. I knew I was really tired. I knew I felt like my ministry didn’t matter. I knew every day of work was a fight, and I didn’t want to fight anymore. But I actually didn’t know I was near the bottom of the sea in my work, until our District Superintendent looked at me and said, “what you’ve dealt with isn’t normal, you need a break. How long do you want? I’ll find coverage and money to pay for it.” She was the whale, or maybe the 8 weeks I took off were. Maybe both? Let’s go with both.

Sometimes I still meet people who know that I took that break – the announcement of it was shockingly popular on YouTube- and I watch them carefully dance around asking me if I’m still a pastor, or still a pastor here, or really what I do in the world now. They’re often shocked to learn I’m still in ministry and grateful for it. (That’s fair, a whole lot of people have exited ministry since then.) I continue to think I have a lot to learn to be in ministry in life-giving and sustainable ways, but the way I knew I still wanted to be a pastor and YOUR pastor was that once the day-to-day pressures were relieved, I found myself dreaming of what we could do together, and missing you. I’m been in those weeds at the bottom of the sea, pastorally, but I just needed some gulps of fresh air to be able to find the dry land. I’m really thankful there was a whale. And, yet, I didn’t know how important the whale was when it arrived.

Romans 8 speaks of hope particularly directly, reconsidering the struggles of people and the world as labor pains of the kindom of God being born. While I don’t want to sanctify the pains or struggles of the world, it would be really great if they were productive like that. If they mattered, and made new things possible. The essay from “We Cry Justice” today talks about the pain of ecological destruction, and the power of the people to stop horrible decisions, EVEN when money is on the other side. That people, together, have power. Which is a good example of the ways that the pain of the earth can become motivation for healing the earth. It is a way that pains can be labor pains.

Romans 8 also speaks famously about hope. “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” None of us can see the whale coming when we’re at the bottom of the sea. Nor, even, could we know it is a saving whale if we did. But hope involves knowing that God is with us, and God is creative, and there ARE whales sometimes, and we can BE whales sometimes, and no matter what happens, we know a God who brings life – again and again.

Dear ones, sometimes God sends whales when we are at the bottom of the sea. Thank God. Amen

1For the uninformed: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/10499923/100+Singalong+Songs+for+Kids/Who+Did+%28Swallow+Jonah%29%3F

February 25, 2024

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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February 18, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Wailing as a Means to Hope” based on Amos 5:10-15 and Jeremiah 31:15-17

I’ve committed to a theme of hope in the midst of despair this Lent, because it is a topic I sense we all desperately need. You can be forgiven for thinking that thus far in worship readings we’ve done the despair part better than the hope part. Our “We Cry Justice” reading came from the section entitled “Struggle and Lament” and an essay entitled, “You Must Let Us Wail” and it was fabulously matched with Amos bemoaning the poor being trampled and Jeremiah offering us the famous words, “Rachel is weeping for her children.”

What excellent summaries of exactly the states of the world that result in a sense of being hopeless and overwhelmed. Dismay, lament, injustice, wailing, and despair.

Amos and Jeremiah are prophets, and that means they’re doing something different with the despair than we might expect. Truthfully, they’re USING it. They’re using it to motivate people, to create change. Amos looks around, sees the messes, points them out, and then calls people to live differently. We hear it within our passage today:

Seek good and not evil,
   that you may live;
and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
   just as you have said.
Hate evil and love good,
   and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,
   will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Those two verses show up in the midst of a looooooooong lament, but they’re also THE POINT. “Do life differently, don’t keep up this system of things being unjust.” And, indeed, Amos is lamenting the unjust ways society is siphoning wealth from the poor to the rich. Many modern prophet smake similar points in similar ways. But perhaps we’re not hearing the point within the lament – the POINT is to create change.

Jeremiah is doing a similar thing but on a larger scale. Jeremiah is the prophet of the exile: he saw where things would land if nothing changed, he saw destruction happening, he saw the depth of despair, and then afterwards he points out that not all hope is lost. His is a tough book, but the hope in it is real. We may also be trained to hear more easily, “Rachel is weeping for her children” than the lines that follow it, “They shall come back, there is hope for your future.” Jeremiah isn’t speaking an easy or light hope, he is speaking hope into the darkest of times – and that hope was just as real as his concerns about the exile had been.

In Jeremiah’s writing, despair is named, and met with hope, despite it all.

Interestingly, Stephen Pavey seems to be doing a similar thing. He is speaking clearly about the injustices of our day, but he isn’t doing it to bring hopelessness. He says, “Callie and Martin, like Amos, are speaking for God using the poetry and prophecy of lament. They are calling for justice to be worked out and lived out in order to build a different world, a beloved community.”1

There is a funny truth here: prophets don’t lament things being the way they are to induce hopelessness and lead people to shut down because they’re overwhelmed. Prophets name injustice because they believe JUSTICE is possible. Prophets name systemic greed because they believe an equitable distribution of resources is possible. Prophets name their concern about “how things are going” because they have hope it can get turned around.

Why isn’t this more obvious? Why does this seem worth mentioning, even?

I think dear ones, because we now live lives saturated in “news” that can sound a little bit like prophecy, but isn’t. Headlines lament poisoned water, but “the news” is an industry committed to turning a profit from exposing bad news. There may be plenty of people in the industry who do so hoping it will motivate change, but that isn’t the industry’s first concern. And, we’d probably be OK if there were just headlines about poisoned water. We can work on that! But there are also headlines about… wars, possible genocides, famines, coups, floods, fires, earthquakes, ELECTIONS, hospital mergers, lack of nursing home staffing, COVID learning declines, long COVID, increasing poverty rates, lack of housing for migrants, use of solitary confinement despite it being banned…

What else have you read THIS WEEK?

The news can sound like a prophet, but it isn’t one.

Because a prophet shares concerns about injustice to motivate changes towards God’s visions of justice. NOT to make money.

Now, I’m really not trying to pick on the news industry (it is having a hard enough time), nor discourage you from seeking to be informed (which sometimes can feel like a form of power in an otherwise powerless existence). Rather, I’m wanting to remind us all that a constant intake of bad news isn’t something we’re OBLIGATED to engage in, and knowing doesn’t ACTUALLY create change. Especially if we’re already overwhelmed, especially if we’re worried about our own lives of that of one of our loved ones. The world is vast and complicated and none of us are ever going to know everything, and it is definitely OK to fast from the news when it leads you to hopelessness. (Lenten Spiritual practice I’d recommend, even.)

Because the news isn’t doing the work of the prophets. It isn’t rooted in hope.

The prophets do that work and God still calls them to do it. Interestingly, the prophets sometimes get overwhelmed by despair too, but somehow they find their way through Somehow the urging of God to call for something BETTER than what is, motivates them to move beyond what’s wrong and into what could be. When we seek out information, maybe it matters a little bit why the story is being told – and why it is being listened to. None of us can respond to the hundreds of concerns we can read about every day, so it is worth paying attention to if in-taking them is live-giving or life-draining. I do not believe God needs us to know about one more justice issue we can’t tackle if knowing it drains us from hope.

There is, however, something fundamentally GOOD about injustice being named – by prophets and even by the news. The piece of hope is that people will respond “this isn’t as it should be.” Now, again, if that’s just a way to make some money, meh. But STILL, just naming that things being broken isn’t as God wants them to be MATTERS.

The act of lament is the act of seeing what is broken and wishing for it to be healed.

Sometimes, dear ones, when we feel hopeless, I think we’re really engaging in the sacred act of lament. And we need not berate ourselves for engaging in sacred actions, even if they’re hard.

What we may need to guard against though, is being so overwhelmed that we move into helplessness. And that, beloveds of God, I sometimes fear is one of the impacts of the 24 hour news cycle compounded by social media. They move us into learned helplessness. Because we hear about wars fought far away, and children being made into orphans, and we can’t actually DO anything about it – and we hear about … and we can’t do anything about it, and we hear about… and we can’t do anything about it, and we start to learn that we can’t do ANYTHING.

Which is simply not true.

We can’t create peace in the Middle East, but we can reach out to our neighbors in the Capital Region who are Muslim and Jewish and remind them with our words and actions they are seen and loved. That matters in the face of the hatred being slung around, and it matters in simply planting the seeds of peace and love in the world. We can’t eliminate hunger within the world or even our community, but we’ve learned we can serve one hot meal with a healthy dose of respect and that it can matter a whole lot. We can’t eliminate single use plastics, but we’ve learned to grocery shop with reusable bags, and carry reusable water bottles and those actions add up.

There is plenty we can do, actually, there is so much we can do we struggle to decide which ways to share our love in the world, right? GOOD!!

Dear ones, a yearning for the world to be different, a lament at how things are, a longing for more justice, even fear that things might continue without change – these are beautiful expressions of HOPE. Because something in you believes this brokenness isn’t enough, and shouldn’t be enough. It meant to motivate change.

Not despair, not being overwhelmed, not learned helplessness. Change.

Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate.

It is possible. With God all things are possible. Love good dear ones, it isn’t time to give up yet. Amen

1 Stephen Pavey“12: You Must Let Us Wail” in We Cry Justice, ed. Liz Theoharis (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021) p. 57 used with permission.

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 18, 2024

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February 11, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Dazzling Blackness” based on Exodus 16:15-25 and Mark 9:2-9

This week has included a delightful amount of sunlight. Which was nice because I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Several times I found myself turning my face to the sun, closing my eyes, and just savoring the wonder of warmth on my face.

The sun can feel like a gift directly from God, especially after dreary winter days, and I have realized that the delightful warmth of the sun is something I associate with the story of the transfiguration, when we’re told “And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” I envision Jesus shining like the sun.

Which, I think is pretty much in the text.

And I think is a gorgeous metaphor.

It is an especially gorgeous metaphor in the time it comes from, when nights were unyieldingly dark and the sun was the way things were illuminated. When it was day, people could see clearly. When it was night, they could not. Then, to have Jesus shine like the sun serves to remind people of the ways God illuminates truths that are otherwise not easily seen. Its lovely.

I think, though, that is also incomplete. If Jesus shining like the sun was one single metaphor in the midst of many, it would be an important one. But there are a LOT of metaphors about God and Jesus as the Light of the World, and all together they end up creating a mental narrative that light is good and dark is bad. Right? Which fits the whole “it is easier to see things in light” idea.

Light is only half the story. I’ve been asked a lot about day and night recently, and found myself saying, “it is dark right now because the sun is shining on the other half of the world.” Light and darkness are balanced on our planet, and focusing on just one half of that whole gets us out of balance.

The total solar eclipse is seen from Charleston, South Carolina, on August 21, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

And darkness has its own profound spiritual gifts. Darkness is the space for rest and restoration. It is also the time for un-productivity. Those things you can do in the light – the planting and sowing, knitting and weaving, cooking (or gathering manna) and cleaning up – just don’t work as well in the dark. Historically nighttime was for storytelling and song, snuggling and simply being. The demands of the day couldn’t be met a night, so night had its own softer rhythm.

Slower, more about connection and joy, a time to make sense of things that had happened, a time to consider what was coming. Time for prayer, and contemplation. Time for rest – physical and otherwise.

In this “city that lights and hauls the world,” we are at the epicenter of messing up darkness by making it possible to be productive during the night! Maybe this is why the image of Jesus shining feels incomplete to me – we are used to lots of shining and seeing the value of light, but we don’t get enough darkness.

In the book “The Dark Night of the Soul” by Thomas Moore, the metaphor of darkness is expanded and used to make space for times of grief, uncertainty, and when healing is desperately needed. Moore talks of those as times when we can’t connect to God because the ways we once understood God don’t fit how we now understand things. For him, the darkness becomes a womb, a place where development is happening without being seen, a place one stays in until one is ready to leave and able to thrive outside the womb.

Which is all to say that God is found in the darkness, and not just in the light, and I fear that modern Christian faith over focuses on the light, just like modern life does. We fight back the darkness with LED bulbs, and we miss the gifts the darkness means to give us.

I also want to take this one step further, when we associate light with God we then end up associating darkness with … not God? Maybe even with evil. In our society, which is full up to the brim with white supremacy narratives, that creates big dangers. At the time of Jesus, racism wasn’t one of the issues on the table. But today, it IS. And while light and dark aren’t the same thing as light skin and dark skin, they’re related enough that when we emphasize the goodness of light, we end up supporting the narratives of white supremacy. And when we emphasize fighting back against the powers of darkness, we end up supporting the narratives of white supremacy.

Which, clearly, isn’t what we want to do.

So I want to reimagine this story in the simplest of ways. What if Peter, James, and John get to the top of the mountain and see Jesus transfigured before them, and his clothes become dazzlingly black, such as no pigment on earth could dye them? And then the story goes on like we know it, with Elijah and Moses appearing, Peter sticking his foot in his mouth, God blessing Jesus, and Jesus requesting the whole experience stays a secret.

What happens in our imagination if the clothes are dazzling black? What happens if we see Jesus transfigured and instead of the ways that light is reflected by white, what we see is light being absorbed by black? Is it less dazzling? More? Less sacred? More? Maybe just the same, but different too.

Of the many gifts of darkness, one of them is that there aren’t shadows in darkness. Jung speaks eloquently about our shadow selves, the ones we try to hide that emerge despite out best efforts. Which, really sounds like the metaphor I’m concerned about, but I think we can glean something from it. Especially because the parts we experience as “shadows” are wonderful and important parts of ourselves that we’ve denied, but are are beloved by God. But in darkness, there are no shadows. Which I think suggests that darkness makes space for us to integrate ourselves, the self we project into the world with the self we try to hide, and to simply be as a human – imperfect but beloved by God. Darkness lets us be whole, make space for our whole self, and notices the gifts of all aspects of our beings. Darkness is a place for healing and integration! What a wonderful, and needed, gift!

What if the dazzling black of Jesus’s clothes that is awe inspiring like catching a glimpse of the cosmos itself, was also an experience of profound love where Peter, James, and John realized that they were loved as they were – all parts of themselves, even the ones that they struggled to love or were ashamed of? What if the reason Peter offers to build a monument is because it is so utterly amazing to find out that God can love the whole of you, even when you struggle to do so yourself? What if the dazzling blackness is being wrapped in the story that you are already loved, just as you are, without hesitation, and without an expectation that it takes producing enough to be enough? What if our humanity is found in the meaning-making of darkness instead of in the production of light?

What if the dazzling blackness is another form of manna in the desert – a way of God taking care of the things the people need? And what if it is meant to be shared with abundance because there is plenty – of manna, of love, of darkness?

What if all we have to do to experience it is to turn out the lights?

Amen

February 11, 2024

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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February 4, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Yet Always Rejoicing” based on Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 2 Corinthians 6:1-10

This church has been described a church who loves to learn. Its true. We love knowledge around here. We love learning things. We especially love learning things that help us know how to build the kindom of God, but I think it is fair to say that most of us also believe knowing more will help in the long run, so we’ll take learning for its own sake too.

We like knowing how things are. We like knowing how things could be. We like knowing how to get from here to there.

I am not an exception to this, I fit right in. Maybe I’m a little MORESO than average. And the desire to learn, and to know, and to consider are things I love about this church.

It also relates to some of our shared frustrations. Because we also want the world to value learning and knowledge, and to use knowledge for good, and generally to make things better, but we look around and that doesn’t seem to happen. (Or at least not fast enough.) Worse, we look around and the values we share: love, justice, compassion, inclusion, and humility are also not shared in the world.

We look around and things are a mess and we lose hope. And I’m going to play with hope and faith for Lent, so hold on to that for a few weeks. But for now, I think maybe we need a reminder that we may love to learn, and we may be invested in building the kindom of God, but at exactly the same time, we are not God. And God is going to work for good no matter what – with us, through us, despite us, no matter what. If we know something useful, great! If we don’t, God will find a way. If we find great partners, awesome. If not, God will find a way.

We end up being taught by the world that there isn’t enough. Right? There aren’t enough good jobs, so some people some people get ones that don’t pay enough. There isn’t enough good housing, so some people don’t get it. There isn’t enough… you name it and some people get the thing and some people don’t.

But that’s the way our society works, not the way God works. With God there is enough. There is enough love, everyone is loved. There is enough food, enough for everyone to be fed well. There is enough hope, enough to get us through. And, funny enough, there is enough MONEY for everyone to actually do OK. But the ways the world deals with debt and interest gets in the way.

Shifting from the world’s scarcity model to God’s abundance model is a hard thing to do! It takes constant awareness. It takes leaps of faith. It takes a community holding the truth of abundance together. And it takes God’s willingness to give us strength and knowledge to keep moving towards the narrative of abundance.

One important piece of the narrative of abundance for me these days is the reminder that there are enough people working for the kindom, that I can trust God working through all of us and only be responsible for my little contributions. I’ve been thinking about Jesus saying “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It sounds a bit like “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. “ from our Pauline reading today.

God’s abundance is there – including the abundance of rest and joy!!

So, I’m all for us continuing to be people who love to learn. We’re good at it, it is needed, and it helps us work with God. And I’m for us continuing to listen to God’s dreams, because they are amazing and because they inoculate us against the myths of scarcity. I’m for our work of justice and advocacy and our actions of compassion because they all build the kindom of God.

Part of our job, too, is to trust that if we do our part, God works with others to do theirs, and change happens. God plants seeds that can take years, decades, centuries to grow, but boy oh boy when they do! So let’s make sure we are nurturing God’s seeds in us and in our community, and hold on to the knowledge that with the God of abundance, all things are possible. Amen

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January 28, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Changing the Narrative” based on Deuteronomy 15:1-4 and Matthew 26:1-16

I grew up in the country, and went to college in rural New Hampshire, so when I started interning as a pastor in urban Los Angeles, …. well, there was a big learning curve. I was scared of cities, because they were just new to me, and I found them overwhelming. Los Angeles is a major urban center, and like most of our urban centers it has dazzling wealth and heartbreaking poverty. Homelessness is an especially huge problem in Los Angeles because people spend their live savings to get there expecting to “make it big” by walking down the street and having a producer hire them for a major movie. Also, it isn’t cold there, so there aren’t networks of code blue shelters.

I worked at a wonderful church, the Hollywood United Methodist Church, and in ways similar to here, the congregation itself was a mixture of the housed and the unhoused, and no conversation about the church happened without awareness of their unhoused neighbors. One of the most distressing moments of my life was in getting to know the unhoused in the Hollywood Church and those who lived around it, and realizing that many of them were the same population as the people I cared for at Sky Lake Special Needs camps. That the most vulnerable among us were living the hardest lives is a lesson I’ve never gotten over. While I served there we would also go to Skid Row – the poorest part of Los Angeles – and serve meals, an experience that wiped any lingering blinders I had about the justice of unfettered competitive capitalism.

After my first year interning at Hollywood, I went on a mission trip to Cuba with Volunteers in Mission. We started in Havana, and eventually drove east to the site where we would work. After several days on the road I finally realized that I was tense all the time because it constantly felt like we were about to slip into a neighborhood like Skid Row, and I expected the punch to the stomach that I’d experienced in seeing Skid Row. But, in Cuba, everything felt like the neighborhood before you got to jaw-dropping poverty. But you never got to jaw-dropping poverty. This was 2004, and I’ve since learned that in the early years after the US embargo there really wasn’t enough enough food, but by 2004 the island had figured out how to feed and house everyone sufficiently – even though cement crumbled and drug stores were largely bare.

There wasn’t much panhandling in Cuba either. There was a little bit, in tourist spots, but our hosts pointed out that because everyone is housed and fed in Cuba, the panhandling was for extra money, not for for basics. I ended up going back to Cuba a few years later, and had very similar experiences. Like the metaphors of a fish being unable to understand water, it took leaving unfettered competitive capitalism for me to be able to see it.

This week I had the chance to attend a conversation led by the Labor and Religion Coalition on the New York State Budget. Many of us are familiar with the Federal Poverty Line, right? And we’re also familiar with it’s limitations, namely that it is abysmally low and a person or family living above that line will still be struggling to make ends meet. You may already know about the United Way measure “ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed)”, but I didn’t. (Can’t tell you if I hadn’t heard it or hadn’t retained it though. Shrug.)

ALICE is a measure of who isn’t making ends meet in society. Fabulously, United Way does an amazing amount of work with the data on Alice. For instance, in NYS 14% of people live under the poverty line. Another 30% of people are in ALICE, and 56% of people are “doing OK” and making ends meet. The numbers a bit worse in Schenectady – in our city 49.8 people live below the ALICE threshold, which is to say that HALF of the people in this city aren’t making ends meet.

What was particularly interesting in the presentation this week was the visual on recent poverty rates.

Namely, that during 2020, when the government focused on responding to people’s needs with stimulus checks, child tax credits, and expansion of SNAP benefits, people living under the national poverty line hit a 20 year LOW.

And since then, the rates have been creeping back up. The work of the Labor and Religion Coalition and their partners The Poor People’s campaign includes asking NYS to readjust it’s priorities. Stop having regressive tax laws that benefit corporations and the wealthy, and use the income gained to bring greater support for the most vulnerable.

Compared to how we have been operating as a society, this feels like a PIPE DREAM. There so many barriers, so many counter arguments, so much fear of the accusation of “raising taxes.” But then I read the Bible, and I read it with the guidance of Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Rev. Dr. William Barber, and God is behind that pipe dream.

Which, for me at least, means it is possible.

Which means we can dream about what it would feel like to live in a society where everyone is housed, and housed adequately. Archaeology suggests that in the first 400 years of Ancient Israelite society – the years before kings – all the houses were about the same size. Which means that society was organized around mutual care for each other and sharing of resources. I’ve been shocked to learn from the book “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow that MANY ancient societies were really egalitarian like that, including ones with major urban centers, including ones that were stable for many centuries. The ancient Hebrews weren’t an outlier.

The Hebrew Bible, though, gets really clear on what is needed to create a society where people care for each other. Everyone needs access to resources – in their case land. Did you know that in Hawaii the native people divvied up the land like really narrow pieces of pie because they knew every group of people needed access to the resources of both the land and the sea? God has worked with peoples in so many times and places to take care of each other, and that means it is possible. Liz Theoharis sufficiently mentions the other rules, “forgiving debts, raising wages, outlawing slavery, and restructuring society around the needs of the poor.”1 That’s what we hear in Deuteronomy today. That’s what Jesus reflect on in the gospel.

I’m struck by her clear statement that “charity will not end poverty.” It reminds me of the Simone Weil quote, “It is only by the grace of God that the poor can forgive the rich the bread they feed them.” As long as we have a society that makes some people rich BY making other people poor we’ll have lots and lots of opportunities for charity, but nothing will change.

Our work, I believe, is the work of “narrative takeover.” For us, it may take some time. There is a lot in this unfettered competitive capitalism that we’ve been trained not to see, or to think is necessary, or acceptable, and the work we’re doing with “We Cry Justice” this year helps us reframe the narrative.

What IS the purpose of a society? If it is to fulfill “there will be no need among you,” then we know what direction to turn in, even it it will be a long journey to get there. It is funny, isn’t it? That people know the quote “the poor you will always have with you” but they don’t know that the implication of it is “as long as you fail to follow what God is asking of you.”

So I invite us to this dream. What would it be like to live in a society that houses people well, where everyone had enough nutritious food, where healthcare can accessed? Can you even dream it? What are the implications? I think life would be easier for teachers – because so many barriers to learning would be eliminated. If those who spend their lives fighting to make ends meet were able to focus there gifts elsewhere, what could they offer? We would be able to offer great care to those who are aging, those who are young, and those with special needs – none of which we’re doing now. People fighting to survive might then have energy for art, music, gardening, and other wonderful things that would enrich their lives and the lives of those around them! I suspect mental health would increase, because the fundamental fear of falling through the safety net wouldn’t keep people up at night, and because there would be less stress, and more time for people to connect with those they love. Lives would probably get longer, violence would decrease, ERs would be less crowded, I think there might even be less litter and faster scientific progress. OH, and just that quick reminder- studies say that housing everyone, and feeding everyone, and getting healthcare to everyone would COST US LESS AS A SOCIETY THAN HOW WE DO IT NOW.

Kinda makes you wonder who benefits from how we do it now, doesn’t it?

OK, that’s probably about as much fish trying to see the water as we can take for a day. But I’d love to hear from you what else WILL happen when we make God’s dreams a reality…. let’s keep on building that narrative for each other, until we can see the dream clearly and then see the ways we are most gifted at moving towards it. May there be no need among us. Amen

1Liz Theoharis “1: Is Ending Poverty Possible?” in We Cry Justice, ed. Liz Theoharis (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021) used with permission.

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 28, 2024

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January 21, 2024
by Sara Baron

“I Am Thine” based on Jeremiah 31:31–34 and Matthew 25:14-30

Historical Background of Covenant Renewal Service.

This service comes to us through John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist theological tradition. For him what it meant to be a mature disciple of Christ was the joining of believers in a covenant “to serve God with all our heart and with all our soul.” He urged his Methodist followers to renew, “at every point, our covenant, that the Lord should be our God.”

On August 11, 1755, Wesley refers to an occasion when he conducted a service that provided opportunity for persons to make or renew that covenant with God. Listen to this account from his daily journal:

“I mentioned to the congregation another means of increasing serious religion, which had been frequently practiced by our forefathers, namely, the joining in a covenant to serve God with all our heart and with all our soul.

I explained this for several mornings and on Friday many of us kept a fast to the Lord, beseeching him to give us wisdom and strength, to make a promise unto the Lord our God and keep it.

On Monday, August 11, I explained once more the nature of such an engagement, and the manner of doing it acceptably to God.

At six in the evening we met for that purpose. After I had recited the tenor of the covenant proposed all those who desired to give testimony of their entrance into this covenant stood up, to the number of about 1,800 persons.

Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain forever.” 1

This became something traditional to do at the beginning of each year, a fact I didn’t know until our Bishop asked us to engage in a service of Covenant Renewal sometime this January. At the end of December a window closed for churches to decide to leave The United Methodist Church but keep their buildings and assets. The churches that remain, remain in connection and covenant with each other to love God, love God’s people, and work together for the building of the kindom. So as we remember and renew the vows of our baptisms and the commitments we make to each other, we also remember the ways that The United Methodist Church holds us together in sacred covenant.

Sermon

I’m gushy about baptisms. The promises made are so sacred, and the experience of including a new person in the Body of Christ are so powerful. I have favorite parts of course. I really like asking if people “accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves?” I like the water part, and the prayer over the water, and while it still feels a little strange, I like passing on the Holy Spirit too.

But the most important part of baptism for me isn’t explicit. It is that when we baptize someone, we celebrate their very existence and thank God for them, and while we are thanking God for them, our gratitude for their very existence, becomes the way in which we welcome them into the church and promise to teach them about God and grace. I try, at every baptism, to remind all the people present that this wonderful celebration of the person or people being baptized is also a reminder of the same celebration for them. That each and every human life is sacred, that God delights in each one, and that at some time, the church took time to celebrate YOU too. (And if it hasn’t, it will if you are willing.)

The church makes promises at baptism, for today they’ve been adapted to be mutual rather than specific to the baptized, which is right for today and a good reminder for every day, “By teaching and example we will guide each other to accept God’s grace, to profess faith openly, to demand justice in all places, to love freely, and to build the kindom of God on earth.” (#nopressure)

I cannot help but think that the parable of the talents is a description of the world as it is, rather than being about God’s kindom. In the world as it is, having gets you more, interest works for the wealthy, and the powerful can be terribly frightening. The church is meant to be something different. We are people defined by being loved by God, and formed by love in community. At our best, we are signs of love and hope in the midst of a world that is terrified and has far too much hate.

The words of the Baptismal Covenant call us back to ourselves, to our commitments to God and each other, to the ways that we are doing something different than the world’s competition, accusation, and inherent violence.

A piece of today’s worship that is not a part of our traditional baptismal covenant is the “Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition.” I have no idea how familiar this is to you – it maybe be the foundation of your faith (it has been to many people I know) or completely new. It is a prayer of humility, and I think a prayer of community. It puts the needs of each of us as individuals second to the needs and dreams of God for the whole. I find it hard to pray, because it is truly terrifying what God might do. But then I remember that I’m not actually afraid of God. God is seeking goodness, and for each of us and all of us at the same time.

When I sit with God and try to listen, I always expect God to add things to my to do list – to sound a lot like my internal voices. Those voices that chide me for not having done things yet, or better, or for the things I have done, or for wasting time, or not … well, for what I do and what I don’t do. But when I actually listen to God, it turns out God isn’t the source of all that internal judgement. That’s all me. God is the one saying, “Hello love, you can stop planning to optimize your day, and just be. You are enough as you are, and I’m not asking more of you.” This might sound different for you, probably because your internal voices are different. But God is the one saying things like, “I love you, and you are already good enough.” “I love you, and you don’t have to earn it.” “I love you and see you as you are, you don’t need to be any more special for me to love you.” “I love you, and you don’t have to know enough to count for me.” “I love you, and I’m here supporting you.” “I love you, and I’m with you always no matter what you face.”

Really, these are the things we try to convey at baptism, and we promise to teach the baptized: that each one is loved by God, defined by that love, and enough as they are.

What a joy to remember that we are a community committed to and defined by God’s love. Holy One, I am thine – and I’m going to trust you to take it from there. Amen

1Adapted from http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/covenant-service-directions-for-renewing-our-covenant-with-god/wesley-covenant-service-1998-jeren-rowel/

Photo Credit: Dana Carroll.

Baptismal Remembrance Design: Karyn McCloskey

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 21, 2024

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January 14, 2024
by Sara Baron

“The Beloved Way” based on Acts 2:43-47

This week I had a routine dental appointment. Our dentist, selected carefully by the measure of being covered by our dental insurance, having opening for new patients, and being a woman of color (my first choice when available) turns to have incredible an generic suburban office.

So I’m lying there, having my teeth cleaned, and staring at the florescent lights and ceiling tiles and suddenly I start thinking about the impact of this office on the world. The ways that routine preventative dental care subtly but profoundly impacts peoples’ lives. The wonder that is dental care when a tooth is aching, and someone can help. The life-changing reality of dentures. It becomes sort of amazing, thinking about this one small office in the midst of a maze of medical offices, and the difference it makes it people’s lives.

It was actually awe-inspiring, maybe because I never before thought about the utter wonder that is a modern, first world dental office and its impact. Wow. The only times I’ve come close to thinking about this is when I hear from or consider the work of our missionary, Dr. Belinda Forbes whose life work has been in offering dental care in Nicaragua where there are so few dentists that there is only one dentist for every 20,000 people. Listening to Belinda talk about training health volunteers to teach tooth-brushing, and to engage in tooth extraction always reminds me how imperative dental work is, but somehow this all still felt like a revelation to me.

(Dr. Forbes)

Dental work is an imperative part of the kin-mod of God. We can’t be holistically well if our teeth ache or if we can’t eat good food.

The wonder of all this for me was that this dental office is just there, quietly doing its work of caring for its patients, just like many others in our region, providing imperative care to people, and being a part of building the kingdom of God whether they know it or not. Now, I’m not saying dental care is perfect. Right? Some offices overcharge, some offer subpar care, systemic racism is at play there like everywhere else, and worst of all there are far too many people in our country who can’t afford to access dental care. It isn’t perfect.

But it is good. And it is a very good starting point for the kind of dental care the kingdom needs. Which is really, really nice because there is no need to start from scratch on that one, just expend access and increase justice.

And, the truth is that there are lot of pieces of our society that are like this – already people all over the place are doing foundationally good work, that matters to other people, and holistic well-being, and the kingdom of God, and …. wow!

When I read from Rev. Dr. King, I’m always struck by the depth of his faith. He had a clear-eyed view of the impacts of racism, poverty, cycles of violence, and the military industrial complex. His analysis of them and the ways they interplay is outstanding. Yet, it was his faith that he brought to his work, and his faith that led his work. He worked from a position of hope. He believed that the people working together could bring change, that love could overpower hate, that the evils of the world wouldn’t have the final say. His belief in God extended to belief in people, and our capacity to overcome the brokenness and actually build the beloved community. And he thought we got there by shared nonviolent direct action – which sounds like Jesus to me. It should, right, he was a Christian clergy person with a doctorate from a United Methodist Seminary (just saying). But I’ve noticed not all Christian clergy people pay a lot of attention to the power of nonviolence in the life of Jesus and his followers.

The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.1

I often speak of this as the kingdom of God, but I think it is good to remember there are other ways of talking about it, in including “the beloved community” like Rev. Dr. King said or “the way” the early Christians spoke of.

Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence has been broken down to 6 principles, I’ve shared some of them with you in the past. Today I want to share the 6th:

PRINCIPLE SIX: Nonviolence Believes That the Universe Is on the Side of Justice.

The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.
Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice. 2

That’s what I mean by being struck by the depth of his faith. He saw the problems, but he believed that God will win.

When I read Acts 2, I’m overwhelmed. The space between the radical nature of the early church in selling all they had and living in complete inter-dependence and the way faith is practiced today seems impossibly far. But it turns out that there are so many things actually going right, things that we may not see or might take for granted, things that need a little bit of adjusting to be better, but are already working for good. There are lots of them, if we look. This week I saw one, I hope this coming week you see two. There is reason for hope, for faith, and there is a lot of need for nonviolent love in this world. Thanks be to God who is our source of hope, faith, and love. Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/ – “The Beloved Community” accessed January 11, 2024.

2Ibid., Dr. King’s Fundamental Philosophy of Nonviolence.

January 14, 2024

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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December 17, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Yearning for Joy” based on Micah 6:6-8 and Luke 1:67-80

I was in a “non-violent communication” workshop one time, which is a place that teaches about human emotions and how to have them without judging yourself for them. So, we’re in this workshop and someone takes the MOST obvious of teaching moments, something that would almost make you groan except that in this case, I didn’t KNOW the thing she was teaching so I was grateful that she made it so obvious.

We’d just come back from lunch and we were asked how we were doing, with the request that we respond with how we were feeling. It was practice with using feeling words. The co-teacher responded, “I’m feeling torn. I’m excited to be teaching this group, and at the same time I’m concerned about the two students who aren’t back yet.” There I was, in my 30s, and I’d just learned that it was VALID to hold MORE THAN ONE EMOTION at the same time. Which was helpful, because I’d done that plenty, but somehow I hadn’t known it was OK.

(This is why I often share really simple stuff about emotions with the rest of you – it was late in life learning for me and its been really significant. I dearly hope most of you already knew this, but when I look around at our society, I’m not sure who would have taught you.)

So I learned that when I take my feelings seriously, both on their own, and as flags pointing me to things I care about and value, I am allowed to feel more than one emotion – even seemingly contradictory ones. This knowledge has been very helpful for me, particularly in moments in my life when my life and the world as a whole were doing really differently. Like when Trump was elected and there was fear of what his presidency would look like – and I was newly in love and wedding planning at the same time. Or when there was a global pandemic and the country was locked down and everything was hard and confusing and – oh – I finally got to become a parent.

Which is all a long introduction to say: this is Joy Sunday, and heavens that can be confusing in the midst of sadness, anger, fear, and exhaustion. There seem to be plenty of reasons to skip joy – grief and heartache, violence and injustice for example.

And yet, none of that negates joy. In fact, oddly enough, making space for any emotion can make space for others too. It is possible to be deeply sad and deeply joyful at the same time. They don’t cancel each other out, sometimes they even harmonize.

Micah 6:6-8 is one of my favorite texts, and I know that’s true for many of you. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We try, really hard, to live this. But sometimes, I can get off kilter. I can get so focused on trying to do justice, that I forget to notice I’m also supposed to love and savor kindness. I also can forget that God is God and I’m not, and the responsibility for the whole world is NOT on my shoulders.

In recent months I’ve been hearing nudges from God to make more space for joy. It has been interesting to notice my own resistance to it. There are biases in me that worry about making space for joy. They tell me that I was born with rose colored glasses, and being an adult member of society requires me to see the injustices of the world clearly. They tell me that joy is trite, and not very serious, and I should be serious. They remind me of the things that break my heart, and suggest I worry more about those and less about trivial stuff. Basically, there is this whole narrative within me that says I’m supposed to be a mature, responsible human, and that means I should just attend to the hard stuff of life.

And that’s all really interesting because I KNOW BETTER. I believe that God wants all people to be well, to survive and thrive, to experience joy and wonder. I don’t think that anyone is excluded from that, so I believe we are honoring creation and connecting with the Divine when we experience joy.

I know that joy is resistance, that there are parts of our society that try to create anxiety, and sadness for personal gain, and it is useful have joy to repel that. I also know that joy creates internal resistance, making it possible to do the hard things when they come because they aren’t the only thing.

I know a God who calls us to Sabbath- away from consumption and productively and into connection- and I know connection to be a great source of joy. That is, I believe God sets aside time for just joy so that we don’t get confused into thinking life is just about work and hardship.

I also have the honor of being with people at the end of their life, and being with loved ones after a person has died. I know which memories are savored, which things are regretted, and how meaning is made of a life – and it all ends up calling us towards joy.

Finally, and this one may seem backwards – when we mourn unfair and early deaths, a lot of what we grief is the lack of space for the person to continue to have joy in their lives. That would seem to tell us that those who love us want us to life and find joy and savor it! JUST LIKE GOD DOES.

I know all that, I can expound on it for a lot longer than this, and I still find it hard to let myself do it. Some people are better at this than others, and maybe some roles in life hold emotions differently than other roles. I don’t know. I kind of hope this is one of those sermons that doesn’t resonate easily.

Some of the ones who are wise about God suggest that goodness, wonder, and joy lie at the heart of all things, and if you can just see them at the right angle, everything positively sparkles with joy. Other wise ones about God say that it is a mark of true faith to have deep joy.

Which is all to say, if there is some resistance to joy in you – be it your own struggles, or seemingly conflicting emotions, or some narratives that tell you that joy isn’t right for you – I invite you to push back. God wants joy for you, and requests that you stop squelching it. Joy is for everyone, that’s actually the thing we’re doing. We’re working with God to build the kin-dom of God, and one of the ways we’ll know when we get there will be the abundance of joy. And one of the ways we get there is to stop getting in the way of joy!

So, a final story. When I was in college, I had a fairly significant fight with a friend because I’d shared that cookie cutters brought me joy and he maintained that was simply ridiculous. I argued I had a right to feel how I felt, he maintained that … well, basically it seems he said all the stuff I internalized as a narrative about what it means to be a mature adult. Hmmm, I thought I won that fight!! Anyway, there are sugar cookies available with coffee hour today, cut with cookie cutters and decorated with too many sprinkles, and I hope they bring you joy – you deserve it. Thanks be to God for that, 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 17, 2023