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November 5, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Great Cloud of Witnesses” based on Isaiah 25:1, 4a, 6-10a and Matthew 27:50-56

Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney who compiled the Lectionary we’ve used this year, says, “For the Feast of All Saints, this lectionary turns to declarations of God’s faithfulness to all peoples and nations.”1 Perhaps I’m silly, but that was a fabulous “ah ha” for me! When we celebrate All Saints, we are simultaneously thanking God for the lives of the saints AND for God’s presence in the life of the saints. That is, for God’s faithfulness. This awareness brings with it the reminder that even the saints who have gone on before us wouldn’t have themselves if not for God’s actions in their lives.

As a pastor, I sometimes get to hear the stories of God’s faithfulness that aren’t quite public knowledge. The stuff of God can be so vulnerable, and sometimes so WEIRD that it can be hard to share it widely. But I can assure you with the saints we are honoring today who I got to know as their pastor, that there were incredible moments of grace and awe in their lives, for which they were grateful, and in which they were formed.

One story I do have the right to share, and that’s good because it is the story I most want to share with you today. One of our saints who is very heavy on my heart today is Lois Atkinson, it is hard to enter this building without thinking of her because it was so very common to enter this building and either see her or see evidence of her work.

When Lois was actively parenting her three beloved children, her husband and their father came out as gay. It was at the time a rather large scandal in the church, in no small part because he came out from this pulpit and those impacted by it didn’t know it was coming. He left the marriage, and Lois suddenly was the primary provider for her three beloved children. So she got herself a fill time job teaching at SCCC and a part time job too. It was challenging for a while, but things went on, and everyone thrived, and that’s a lovely story.

But there are more pieces, ones that feel really important when we talk about God’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of the saints.

The first of these pieces is that Lois calmly, carefully, consistently, worked in advocacy for LGBTQIA+ people. She served on our Reconciling Team, and she worked hard on making it all that it could be. She marched in Pride Parades. Before we had a Reconciling Team, she worked for this church to become Reconciling – both by giving a lecture on the biology of human sexuality to the church as a whole AND by introducing those who didn’t know queer or trans people to queer and trans people so they could engage with their humanity. Lois kept on working for justice for all people, and she didn’t let anything stop her.

Now, Lois eventually met Richard and remarried and those two REALLY liked each other, which is a very good thing. But the thing that amazed Lois the most was this: when her ex-husband married his long time partner, he invited Lois and Richard to the wedding. She was pretty amazed by that on its own, she thought it indicated that they’d divorced well. Well, Lois and Richard went, and when they came back Lois did something that I only knew her to do that ONE time: she asked if she could meet with me.

Clearly I agreed, and she came in BURSTING with joy. This was the most exuberant I’d ever seen her. She came to talk about the wedding they’d been at, and how WELL she was treated – like an honored guest, and how it had exceeded anything she’d ever expected was possible when they’d divorced. She showed me pictures, and she gushed with wonder at the picture of her adult children with her and their “three dads” – their father and both stepfathers.

Lois didn’t complain about her lot in life, and she didn’t blame anyone for things being hard. In fact the closest thing to a complaint I heard from her was an acknowledgment that for a woman who didn’t like the spotlight, it was hard to be in it when the church was talking about her family, but it was worthwhile because she couldn’t have made it without the church.

Oh friends, I wish you could have seen the wonder in her eyes when she talked about the wedding. I also wish I could remember her words about it verbatim, she said something like “I finally understand resurrection.”

Shoot, maybe I should have held this story for Easter!!

Naw, this is a story of one of our saints, and it could get lost in the brass and lilies of Easter, and it is too important for that. It is real life resurrection, it is hope where even the seeds of hopefulness had never dared to enter. It is life coming full circle in a more abundant and wonderful way that anyone would have EVER imagined.

Also, it is the amazing outcome of decades of faithfulness ending up mattering, which …. let’s be honest, is a story we all could use sometimes.

Our Scriptures today focus on the end of death, that God’s faithfulness will eventually make death disappear. This was definitely a big part of the early Christian narrative. While plenty of other Greco-Roman heroes were said to be resurrected by their various gods or goddesses, the Christian narrative was that Jesus’ resurrection and then ascension opened the door for his followers to defy death as well. By which they meant access to afterlife, because until that point it was assumed only the very very very special who were favored by their gods lived after death. But the early Jesus movement came to believe that Jesus was the firstborn of the dead, and his followers got to follow him into afterlife.

For many Christians today, the promise of heaven is the biggest selling point of our faith. For many of us, and for many of the saints we honor today, that isn’t the central point. For us, the point is making life better on earth, and connecting with the Eternal One.

But, I think we are still people of resurrection. People who see wonder and hope and new life possibilities in life itself. We are people who remember when we lose a loved one that we are able to honor them by living out their best qualities. We are people who believe the kindom is possible, and what we do with our lives matters.

God’s faithfulness is seen in the life of the saints, and in God’s presence with the saints. Resurrection is too. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 313.

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

Nov. 5, 2023

Sermons

“Those Who Walked the Walk” based on Habakkuk 1:1-4;…

November 3, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

(Thanks to Kevin Kempf for the great picture!)

Have you heard of “thin
places?”” I’ve heard it described as places where the veil
between this world and the next is thinner – or where God’s
presence can be especially felt. Ideologically, thin places don’t
make any sense to me. I believe that God is all-present, so God
isn’t any more or less present anywhere.

And yet… I have experienced
thin places. I don’t understand them, but I know them. You may be
needing some examples. Mountaintops are commonly thin places, which
I suspect has less to do with the altitude and more to do with the
effort to get to them and the views they offer. Things just feel
different at the top of a mountain, and many people have experienced
them to be thin places. Sanctuaries are another common choice –
ones in churches or ones at camps. I have often wondered if places
where many people have prayed are changed in some way by the
pervasiveness of the prayers – and thus made more holy. (Again,
this doesn’t fit my understanding, but it fits my experience.)
Sometimes, I think, thin places are not places even, they are
moments. I once had a chance to ask a church about when they’d most
strongly experienced God and a whole lot of them mentioned the births
of their children. It is also very common (but not universal) for a
death to be a thin place.

I
also suspect thin places might have a lot more to do with us being
open to the presence of God that is always with us than a change in
the amount of presence, but however it is, I think they ARE. And,
further, one of those moments that has often been a thin place for me
is All Saints Sunday. Over the course of my ministry, more years
than not, this has been the holiest worship service I’ve led.

This year, like every year, the
names we are about to read lie heavy on my heart. Oh friends, the
saints who have gone on ahead of us taught us so much! We are who we
are because of them! It is an honor to read their names and remember
their lives, but it is also heavy to live without them. One of our
traditions, in this church, is to also name the saints whose loss is
still especially heavy on our hearts, even if their departure was
more than a year ago. The list of those names is also dear – and
beautiful and sad and heavy.

Today conjures in my mind that
simple line “the great cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews 12, which
is an incredibly comforting image. Life can feel overwhelming at
times, and sometimes I have no idea where to turn, but remembering
that those who taught me, and loved me, and guided me – guide me
still and show us the way – is very powerful. It is even better to
notice how many of there are!

So, indeed, All Saints Sunday
is, for me, a thin place, and the names we are about to read and the
lives they represent are an honor to remember and name.

Now,
the gospel passage may not seem terribly well connected to all of
that, perhaps because of the terrible Sunday School song that too
many of us learned about Zacchaeus. (If you don’t know it, I beg
you, stay ignorant.) The story itself, however, is not as trite as
the song. There are surprises all over this story, if you pay
attention to them. One is that a wealthy and powerful man was
particularly interested in Jesus, who aimed his ministry particularly
at people who were living in poverty and disempowered. The second is
that the wealthy and powerful man was willing to forgo his dignity to
try to see Jesus, which seems to want to remind us just how exciting
Jesus was in real life and how worthy of seeking out he was (is).
Then there is the amazing turn in the story when Jesus decides to
focus his attention on Zaccheaus, this wealthy and powerful man,
which I think absolutely no one expected. Zaccheaus, however, was
happy and gracious. Then there is the unsurprising grumbling of the
crowd, who are peeved that Jesus is hanging out with this guy (tax
collectors being about as popular then as border patrol agents are
today). And then there is the turn around where Zaccheaus, having
had this experience with Jesus, commits to a moral and fair life.
(I’m going to disregard my assumptions that he probably couldn’t
afford to pay back 4 times as much as he’d over taken…. that’s not
the point.) It seems that being with Jesus was a thin place for
Zaccheaus, where he could access love, hope, and wonder, and be
changed by it.

The beautiful thing about the
Zaccheaus story is that sometimes we are ALL Zaccheaus, and the story
seems to say that’s OK. Sometimes we have power, and sometimes we
use it wrong, but we’re still TRYING our hardest to know what’s right
and do it, and when we figure what what we’ve done wrong, there is a
chance to change it.

Now,
that’s where this fits in with our Saints today. Because none of the
Saints we celebrate today were actually perfect in their lives. Not
a single one. Our memories may get fuzzy around that, but all the
people we are remembering were fallible. All of them, as well,
sometimes had power and sometimes used it wrong. That’s human life.
What’s WONDERFUL is when people realize what they’ve done and seek to
change it. That’s why they are our saints – because of their
willingness to grow, learn, and change.

Friends, this is an interesting
reminder for those of us trying to follow in their footsteps. And it
is a two-fold reminder: (1) we are not expected to be perfect.
Really. We can’t be, and trying just makes it all worse. (2) And,
when we discover how we’ve erred, if we are willing and able to
change, it makes all the difference. This is, often, a cycle we have
to keep on living. I see it clearly in myself in working towards
anti-racism, a goal I yearn for. However, every time I learn
something new, I have to realize how much I’ve erred in the past, and
change it. AND THEN, you know what, the next thing I learn shows
that I’ve still been erring and I still need to change, and I’m not
there yet. It feels AWFUL, and yet it would feel way worse to keep
messing up once I know what I’m doing.

The
Habbakuk passage feels a little bit too on point for a while, doesn’t
it? It is bemoaning the injustices of the world, and THEN it totally
changes!! The prophet’s concerns are met by GOD’s response, and God
says, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner
may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it
speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for
it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their
spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.”
Oh. My. So our work is to dream, and vision, and make the vision
for God’s goodness clear and visible to others. A commentator
writes, “At at time when the wicked are in control, when the vision
describing God’s intention to reestablish justice has not yet become
a reality, Habakkuk is called in the interim to trust God’s
assurances and to remain faithful.”¹
Not to lose hope, not to give up, not even to keep on bemoaning
reality, but to trust and share the vision.

And the vision that has been
shared with all of us is why we are here. We want to be part of
building God’s vision in the world into everyone’s reality. And the
saints taught us it was possible and showed us the vision. And their
lives have made this a thin place, where we are able to see, a little
more clearly, the beauty of the vision of God and the hope that is
the world for the present and the future. Thanks be to God. Amen

Sermon Talkback Guiding
Questions:

I talked about “thin”
places in the beginning, does that idea make sense to you and if so,
where have you found some?
How are “Saints” related to
learn, growing, changing – and admitting erring?
What else do you see in the
story of Zaccheaus that I didn’t bring out?
Did the Habbakkuk reading
switch too fast for you? (Or not fast enough)
How do you name God’s vision
that we’re working on?
Of the saints we celebrated
today, or have celebrated previously, how did they teach you of
God’s vision for the kindom?
What helps you remember that
you don’t have to be perfect?
What helps you have the courage
to change when you’ve erred?

1Theodore
Hiebert, “Habbakkuk” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume
VII, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abindon Press, 1996), p.
638)

–

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

November 3, 2019