“God’s Responses to Despair” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and…

November 13, 2022
by Sara Baron

The people that walked in darkness have seen a light….
but it is discolored and a little murky.

I think that’s a fair
summary of what the “return” from the exile was actually like.
When Jerusalem was defeated in 587/586 BCE, the city gates were
ripped down, the Temple was destroyed, there was massive death and
destruction, and the remaining leaders, priests, and scribes were
force march to Babylon. The exile. During the time of the exile we
hear emerging stories of great pain and lament, AND prophecies of
great hope in and care of God. The exile and the period right after
it are also the time when the Hebrew Bible started to be written
down.

In 538 BCE those in exile were freed to return home if
they wished. Thank God! And many did, thank God!

And when they came home, it was …. painful.

The Promised Land had been decimated. Those who
remained had been without protection, without resources, without
hope. Many, many had died. I’ve heard as high as 90% of the
population. Those who were alive had now lived in fear and scarcity
for generations. And those who returned weren’t much better off,
except that they’d had hope of return which now turned out to seem to
be misplaced.

I’m going to just throw out here that if we are now in
the “end of the pandemic” it sure doesn’t look like I hoped it
would in March or April of 2020, and I have lots and lots of empathy
for those who “came home from exile” only to find out that home
had changed in the meantime.

In the midst of the struggles of return, and the
conflicts that inevitably emerged between those who’d been left
behind and those who’d been force-ably removed – and even more so
between their children and grandchildren, come the words of our
Hebrew Bible text. In context, Isaiah 65 is still struggling to
answer why things are so bad, and the first part of the chapter
claims that the issue is that people aren’t being faithful to God and
God’s dreams. But this later part of the chapter is focused on the
blessings God has in store for those who do follow the ways of God.
We may like to think of this as the fruits of living out God’s
visions for a just and compassionate society.

And, its pretty great. We’ve talked recently enough
about the part of Jeremiah that urged the exiles to build houses and
live in them, plant gardens and eat from them. This Isaiah passage
reiterates those ideals, but does so BACK AT HOME. Now the command
is not to give up on Jerusalem, but to have hope it can be rebuilt.

I think this might be a good time to remind you that
Jerusalem WAS rebuilt. The Temple was rebuilt. The city walls were
rebuilt. The city gates were rebuilt. The traditions of the people
were rebuilt. The hope in God was rebuilt. It didn’t look the same
as it had before, but it was rebuilt.

In fact, that’s a story we don’t focus on enough, and
I’ve been in initial conversations with people about restarting Bible
Study in January, and I’ve now convinced myself we should read the
book of Ezra, the story of rebuilding Jerusalem. (If you’d like to
study with us, the current question is: what time on Sundays shall we
do it, and I’d LOVE to hear your opinion.)

But now I’m ahead of myself.

In our passage today, we hear of the “new heaven and
new earth” God is preparing. To summarize quickly, I’m turning to
Walter Brueggemann¹:

“Yahweh is moving beyond what is troubling and
unresolved to what is wondrously new and life giving. There is a
steady push towards newness in the Isaiah tradition that intends to
override the despair of Israel, especially the despair of exile.”
246

There are thee facets of new city:

“The first quality of the new city, stated negative
then positively, is a stability and order that guarantees long life.
As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and
brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.” (247)
“There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate
in life as the creator intends.” (248)

“The second facet of the reconstituted city is
economic stability.” Which implies stable society, lack of
invasion, fertility of land, fair taxes, fair laws. “Yahweh will be
the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.” “No
one is threatened, no one is at risk. No one is in jeopardy because
the new city has policies, practice, and protective structures that
guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian
possibility.” (248)

“The third provision…concerns an agenda of
well-being for children in the new city.” (249) “These three
accents on guaranteed long life, economic stability, and life under
blessing all attest to a city in which the power for life given by
the creator is fully available and operates in concrete ways. The
poem is a vision, but it is a vision looking to a public practice.”
(249)

That is, Isaiah 65 is written to COUNTERACT despair with
dreaming. It is a vision of hope, but one that would be worth
perusing. Despite the language of new heaven and new earth, this is a
pretty earth-centric vision. It centers on civic stability, economic
sustainability, and God’s tangible presence among those who are
alive. It starts with peace, includes distribution of goods, and
looks towards the well-being of all.

That seems like it would have landed well among the
people in despair, and changed what was possible for them.

Which has me wondering what God is dreaming of here.
How God is counteracting despair here and now. What sort of vision
God is planting among us for our community, state, nation, world
today?

Because I have noticed that God doesn’t give up when
disaster strikes, God just keeps on working towards goodness. This
also strikes me as the narrative of Luke. I think to hear our Luke
passage well requires remembering that Luke was likely written after
the destruction of the SECOND Temple, which coincided with the
destruction of Jerusalem and a horrifying number of her people. It
was a time of great despair, a moment of transformation in our faith
history and the history of our Jewish siblings in faith, a time when
everything changed and new forms of faith practice had to be created.
The transition from the Temple to the Synagogue happened at that
time, the end of the Sadducees and beginning of the leadership of the
Pharisees, etc. Our tradition was so new I can’t point to the same
types changes, but I can see how seismic this experience was.

The passage we read today was written by the early
Christian community, presumably trying to make sense of the
destruction and trying to reassure each other about what Jesus would
say to them in the midst of it. It is probably true that the Holy
Spirit helped them find these words of comfort, but it is probably
ALSO true that Jesus didn’t say this stuff in his life time.

The early Christian imagination produced the hope it
needed to face its reality without shattering into despair.

Which is to say that both of our passages are written to
people in despair, to try to keep them together and focused on hope.
They just sound really different.

Maybe that’s because people need different things at
different times.

Maybe it is because the despair they faced was
different.

Or because the perceived opponent acted differently.

Or the community was struggling in different ways.

But truly there are different ways to respond to despair
with hope, and the Bible is full of them, and we have two solid
examples before us today.

And, I heard a third recently. Bishop Karen Oliveto
shared a quote that I keep thinking about, “I rarely feel such
clear signs of fatigue and anxiety on days that are filled with
travel, meetings and assignments—only when I stop to rest. Without
sabbath, I would be dangerously ignorant of the true condition of my
soul.” ― Andy Crouch

I think in the midst of the struggles I hear today, this
is the one that could make the fastest difference. Right now we have
a lack of sabbath, lack of rest, lack of spaciousness for joy – and
lack of time to face despair. But this is change-able. We can
prioritize sabbath. We can make space for rest. We can sort through
despair instead of running from it. We can make space for joy and
not just distractions. We can even make space for relationships and
not just be ships passing in the night.

Over the past almost 3 years we’ve been exiled. I can’t
tell if we’ve really returned, but if we have, it is still hard.
We’ve seen a lot of destruction and more than our fair share of
death. But based on the Bible we can be sure that God is speaking a
word of hope and a depth of vision into this moment.

Maybe this seems too simple, but I think it is abundant:
take time OFF. Be spacious with your soul. Let your to-do lists
go. Follow what brings you joy. Let your emotions BE, without
judgment. Let God have time to dream in you.

Because as Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may linger for the
night, but joy comes with the morning.” God isn’t done with us,
not yet. May God’s dreams be met with our spaciousness to hear them!
Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in
Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and
David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press,
1998).

November 13, 2022

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

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“Pride vs. Humility?” based on Psalm 84:1-7 and Luke…

October 23, 2022
by Sara Baron

My
favorite seminary class was “Prayer in the Christian Tradition”
and it was kind like a lab class for prayer. We prayed a lot, in a
lot of different ways, and then we reflected on it. We read books
about what other people thought of as prayer, and we discussed it,
and then we tried it, and we reflected on it, and then we discussed
it again. We learned about prayer types, and we had time to assess
which prayer types we tended towards and which ones… well, drove us
nuts.

Most
of the prayer in that class would have qualified as “contemplative
prayer”, in that it sought to be a means of opening ourselves to
God. Generally speaking I think of contemplative prayer as being a
separate category from “petitionary prayer” where the goal is to
ask God for things, although I admit to that being overly simplified.

So,
anyway, one day in my prayer class we’re given the assignment to pray
“The Jesus Prayer.” We were supposed to do it for a while, maybe
30 minutes or an hour or something, and the professor suggested that
we actually pray it “as is” for a while before changing it. So
we got the experience of praying it as it was, and then got to see
how we would change it and how that would feel. Now, the Jesus
prayer is, “Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This is not exactly my God
language. Had the assignment not been clear (and the professor not
had my respect) I would have changed it immediately. But, I gave it
a try. And that day at least, it was a moving thing to pray.

It made space in me for
different things to emerge than in the prayers I tend towards. It
made space in me for different things to emerge than in the language
I would usually adapt towards.

This week, I was given the gift
of praying the Rosary with someone for whom it is a favorite prayer
practice. Much of the Rosary is – also – not my preferred
language for God. (Although some of it is amazing!)

In
both cases, the repetition made meditative space within me for some
insights that otherwise wouldn’t have had a way to be heard. Which
is one of the great gifts of contemplative prayer, and why I love it
so much.

Now, I can’t hear the Gospel
lesson and the tax collector’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a
sinner!” without thinking of how it got adapted by tradition into
the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me, a sinner,” and how (eventually) freeing it was to have a
sense of mercy and forgiveness for things I was usually trying to
forget I felt guilty about.

The Gospel lesson is inverting
expectations. Normally, the Pharisee would be seen as the one doing
things correctly, Pharisees were famous for their meticulous
commitment to following God’s commandments, and the Pharisee’s prayer
indicates he goes above and beyond even the requirements. Meanwhile,
many people thought very poorly of tax collectors, and they were
rarely the heroes in any stories.

The Gospel praises the tax
collector, for the humility of his prayer while throwing shade at the
Pharisee for his – which is rough since the prayer the Pharisee
prayed was a pretty well known prayer at the time and he wasn’t the
only one doing it.

Now, the Pharisee’s prayer does
strike my ears as arrogant, but I wonder if nuance could help it.
What if instead of “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” he said,
“God, I thank you for what I am able to do, and for your help in
making it possible. I thank you for the temptations I don’t have. I
thank you for the ways I’ve learned that spiritual practice helps me,
and the capacity to do it. I thank you for growing in me a
willingness and capacity to give back.” And, I mean, I’d like to
add, “I open myself to what you want to do next.”

And then I want to ask Jesus if
that prayer is OK. Because I’m not really sure.

I
have been driving by another faith community that has on their sign a
condemnation of self-sufficiency which reads, “You sufficiency is
God’s.” Now, I think self-sufficiency is a horrid myth that does
great damage and I very much hope that they’re trying to encourage
people towards connections with the Divine. But I fear that they may
be making the same error that I hear in the Pharisee.

Because I think there is a
temptation in the phrase, “God is your sufficiency” to believe
that what you have in life is a gift from God. But, the logical
corollary of that position is to believe that what others do NOT have
is a lack of a gift from God. Thus God chooses who has enough to eat
and who does not, who has safe housing and who does not, who
struggles throughout life from childhood trauma and who does not.
And, it entrenches capitalism as God’s will – that if one is doing
OK that is because of God, if one is not doing OK that is because of
God, and thus no one is responsible for creating a system where
everyone is doing OK as a form of justice and righteousness.

(end rant)

I think though, that there has
to space in prayer for utter truth between us and God. And
sometimes, I think we can look at another beloved of God who is
struggling and wish for their struggles to be lessened, and be
thankful that we don’t share that struggle. That might sound like,
“God, I see how horrid it is to live with and fight with addiction,
and I am grateful not to have that challenge.” Or maybe, “Holy
One, my dear friends are divorcing and their hearts ache, and I’m
feeling a little bit guilty even for the love I have in my life, but
I’m thankful for it anyway.”

What
I hear in the Pharisee’s prayer is a dismissal of other people, their
lives, their temptations, their struggles, the external factors
facing them. Scholars tell me that while all tax collectors get
dissed in the Bible and other ancient literature, many of them took
the positions because no other options were open to them, many of
them were honest, and most of them who were dishonest didn’t even
reap the gain from it – their bosses did. The Pharisee’s prayer
dismissed everything about the tax collector except his job, and
didn’t make space for his humanity, needs, or decision making
process.

I don’t know what Jesus (or
maybe Luke, I think signs point to this one being by Luke) was
offended by in the Pharisee’s prayer, but that’s the struggle I hear.

And, it leads me wondering about
what we can be proud of. Years ago now I did a Celebration of Life
service for a church member who had lived through plenty of struggles
in his life. Yet, I was told, he held each of his accomplishments
dear – each certificate of completion, each acknowledgement of
merit, each authorization to try something new. He had a folder in
his backpack that he always carried with him, and in it he kept the
records of his accomplishments. I was delighted by this detail of
his life. I was thrilled that he took what he was able to do
seriously, and made it so that no one could take away from him what
he worked hard to accomplish.

Meanwhile my diplomas and
ordination certificate, et al, sit in a pile in our attic because it
feels pretentious to display them. This isn’t the only story in the
Bible that urges humility, and celebrates the one who comes to God
and the faith community without pride. It is a pretty constant
theme. The urging not to be like this Pharisee is deep seated in our
faith tradition, enough so it can be hard to figure out how to claim
with joy what God is doing in our lives without appearing to brag.

What can we be proud of? What
are we allowed to celebrate? Are we stuck only coming to God with
that Jesus prayer? (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me, a sinner.”)

Heavens I hope not! It is a
viable PIECE of a full prayer life, but it isn’t complete. I think
when we silence what is good in our lives, we also end up silencing
God. In fact, I fear it is easier to focus on sin (individual or
communal) than it is to focus on goodness. And sometimes the urgings
away from pride and towards humility can encourage this.

So,
case in point. In the next few weeks, there are going to be
elections of Bishops in the United States portion of the United
Methodist Church. Some people, God love them, are gifted for
administration and willing to take on the pressure and challenge of
attempting to steer a sinking ship. But conventional wisdom says
that no one who wants to be a Bishop should become one, and those who
wouldn’t ever want the job are the ones who would be best at it. The
ASSUMPTION is that if one admits one’s gifts for administration and
one’s willingness to do truly horrid work, one disqualifies oneself
by lack of humility. (I would note that women and people of color
pay a higher price for not being “humble” than white men do.)

This seems to fit how many of us
think about politicians as well: that those seeking power shouldn’t
be trusted with it (in case the elections of UMC Bishops seemed too
boring for you, which is fair.)

If we are pushing ourselves into
humility at all costs, we are missing the chance to pay attention to
the gifts we have and how we might use them. If, say, a person with
a truly brilliant financial brain thinks of themselves as “below
average with numbers” they might not pay attention when there is a
need for… say…. a church treasurer. (HINT HINT THIS IS NOT
SUBTLE).

Perhaps it will seem ironic to
some of you, I think it does to me, but one of the great gifts of
contemplative prayer for me is the chance to see myself more clearly.
I bring to prayer all the angst, guilt, worry, horror, and fears I
have of how I have erred, failed, and disappointed myself and the
Divine, and then God helps me sort through them. And, while I am
always afraid of God’s judgement, it has turned out pretty much every
time that my judgement is harsher than God’s who tends to reply, “oh
honey, maybe try out a little compassion on yourself too.” The
prayer time helps me see myself and others with compassion, which I
think is related to seeing myself and others more clearly. And
having a clear sense of self involves knowing both strengths and
weaknesses, and admitting them despite the Pharisee.

Or, to share this in a far more
memorable way, this is the poem “God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin
Haught:

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Dear ones, Yes, Yes, Yes! Amen

October 23, 2022

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

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“Now” based on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

October 9, 2022
by Sara Baron

Sometimes,
I get tired of preaching about the exile. I get tired of thinking
about the exile. I get tired of the fact that the exile metaphors
resonate with me, and I’d strongly prefer that they didn’t.

But
I’m ahead of myself, because we don’t talk enough about the exile to
assume that people can follow what I mean by it. So, a quick
historical summary: After King David and King Solomon, the ancient
nation of Israel split into two. The northern part had the name
Israel and the southern part the name
Judah. That was stable for a few hundred years, then the northern
nation was subsumed by Assyria in 722 BCE. The southern
kingdom held on for a while longer (mostly by paying tributes to
larger empires) but was destroyed in 586 BCE.

At
that point the leaders, the literate, and the priests were forced
marched to Babylon, while the poor, illiterate majority were left in
the ruins of a destroyed Jerusalem without the protection of city
gates.

That’s
what we call “the exile.” In 539 BCE (47 years later) the first
of the people who’d been exiled were freed to come back. Meanwhile
the people who stayed had been decimated by famine, disease, and
attackers, and “home” wasn’t what people had remembered or been
told about.

The
reality of the exile is formative in the writing down of the Hebrew
Bible, and the questions that were being asked and answered in how
the stories got written down. It is also one of the great narrative
arcs of the Bible, and I think that’s true because it was written
down when it was still so vibrant in people’s lives and memories. I
also think it is true because the sensation of being displaced from
life as we know it and/or life as it should be is quite common, and
having the narrative of the exile helps us make sense of life as we
know it.

And
now we’re back to the beginning. I appreciate the ways the stories
of the exile make sense of life, but I’m rather tired of identifying
with it. I’d rather resonate with some stories of stability instead.

But,
here we are.

And
in the midst of this is Jeremiah’s profound, shocking, amazing,
unexpected communication on behalf of God. He writes to those in
exile, the ones who have been torn from their homes, the ones who are
prevented from going home by exactly the people who tore up their
home and tore them from their homes and he says on behalf of God:

Build houses and live in them;
plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons
and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in
marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and
do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have
sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its
welfare you will find your welfare.

I
can’t imagine that this is what the exiles wanted to hear.

I
would imagine this was the opposite of what they expected. Wouldn’t
they want to be ready to leave at any time? Why settle in? After
all, the passover celebrates God calling the people from Egypt so
quickly they had to cook unleavened bread! Build houses and plant
gardens? That sounds wrong.

Get
married? Have kids? Keep on living? Keep on trying to thrive and
grow? But, that doesn’t fit either. They’re in a temporary place,
shouldn’t they wait until they get home and can be in the “Promised
Land” and connected to life as they know it, life as it is supposed
to be? Why bring kids into the mess of the exile? I mean, does an
exile marriage even COUNT?

And
then, then God gets INTO it. This is one of the most shocking things
attributed to God in the Bible, and that’s saying a lot. God says,
“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find
your welfare.” Seek the welfare of…. Babylon? Pray for Bablyon?
Work for the wellbeing of Babylon? Our well being is correlated
with the well being of our oppressors?

We
aren’t trying to undermine them? We aren’t trying to destroy them?
We aren’t trying to … at the very least just keep our heads down
until we get to leave? We’re working for their WELFARE? (It may be
helpful to know that I don’t think the exiles were slaves, but nor
were they free to leave.)

That’s
about how I think the exiles would have responded. But maybe I’m
wrong, because while everything God says is counter-intuitive,
everything God says also sounds like God. And they, too, knew God.
So maybe they knew to expect the unexpected, to know compassion for
others would come at the most annoying times, to experience God’s
reminders about loving everyone when they least wanted to hear it.

I
hear the echos of this message from God when Jesus heals the
senator’s daughter, when Paul has compassion for his jailers, and
when MLK reminded his listeners that the goal was not to harm the
oppressors but transform them so they too could live a more wonderful
life.

This
is a very, very Godly message, this “But seek the welfare of the
city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its
behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

I’m
not sure when it gets easy.

Because,
right now, this feels like a message to settle into this
late-pandemic reality. Let go of what was, and build houses HERE.
Plant gardens HERE. Savor relationships and build up families HERE
and NOW. And, seek the welfare of the city where we now are.

But
most of us still aren’t all the way here yet. (Maybe the young are?)
We’re still remembering what was. Maybe, even, we’re still letting
God know that we are ready to bake the bread – even the unleavened
bread – and walk away from this mess right now! We don’t want to
settle into this reality. We want to go HOME. We don’t want to seek
the welfare of this time, we want this time to be different than it
is.

But
God meets us in the now.

Not
the past, the future, nor the time we wish it was. The now.

That
pre-exilic time never returned. But there was a vibrant post-exilic
time, which included things like the Bible being written, the Second
Temple being build, the walls of Jerusalem being restored, and as a
thing that is pretty relevant to us, the life of Jesus.

It
seems to me, from where I’m standing, that the temptation of the
exile is the yearning to return to how things used to be. But God
urges the people to be present in their NOW, which prepares them for
the next things God is going to be up to with them.

I
guess, like the exiles, God is dragging us into the now – sometimes
while we kick and scream like toddlers. And I think that’s the word
as I hear it today. God is with us in the now, calling us into the
now, and preparing us for the future.

And
this is where we meet God.

May
we be open to meeting God here. Amen

October 9, 2022

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

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“Bread of Life” based on Psalm 37:1-9, Habakkuk 1:1-4,…

October 2, 2022
by Sara Baron

Sometimes I hear people say that they’re angry with God,
but are afraid to let themselves feel it, or express it. To those
people, I often suggest Biblical reading. The Bible has no problem
being angry with God nor expressing it. Habakkuh does a great job
with this.

How long, O God!

How long shall I cry for help without getting help?

How long will I tell you of the violence I’m living
without you intervening?

Why help me see what’s wrong, without helping me change
it?

Why is trouble all I see?

Why is destruction all around me?

Why is there never justice?

Why are your laws ignored?

Why is everything getting WORSE?

I’m listening God.

I’m standing here, watching and listening, to hear your
response,

waiting for you to acknowledge my complaints.

Right? Excellent work Habakkuk.

And, way to speak the universal even though you were
speaking to a specific context. It feels like Habakkuh holds today’s
paper in his hands as he writes!

Now, as much as I like the truth of his words, and as
much as I appreciate him finding words when I can’t always do it, the
great part for me in this reading is that God DOES respond.

God says:

Write down my vision.

Write it so big someone running by will be able to read
it.

I still have a vision for justice.

I’m still working for good.

My visions are not a lie.

If it seems too slow, be patient.

Justice is coming.

It will not always be true that injustice wins, or that
those who do harm prosper.

Keep your eyes on my vision.

That’s what we’re doing here. We see, we acknowledge,
we name the injustices of the world. We bemoan them. We advocate
for change, and we are required to see what’s wrong in order to
change it. BUT we also have to see what could be in order to change
it. And we don’t stay with the injustice forever. We keep our focus
on God’s visions.

We keep our focus on the transformational power of love.

We keep our focus on God’s dreams of a just world.

We keep our focus on hope of what is possible.

We don’t believe the injustices of the world are the
final answer. We believe God wins, and that love wins.

And that’s the table we gather at together. The one of
hope, the one of EVERYONE, the one that brings us together to work
for God’s vision. People in different countries, people in different
denominations, people speaking different languages, people with
different bodies in , people with different theological
understandings of sacrament. United by vision. Being fed by the
bread of life so we can be for the world a gift of love. Receiving
the gifts of God’s love so we can share it. Remembering hope, so we
can live it. Expanding the table, because that’s an imperative part
of the vision itself.

We receive the bread of life.

We are the bread of life.

Thanks be to God. 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

October 2, 2022

Uncategorized

“Hell and the Mid-Terms”based on Amos 6:1a, 4-7 and…

September 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

If
you want to watch me get internally up in arms quickly, you can give
me a Biblical narrative about heaven and hell that directly suggests
that God sends bad people to suffer in hell. I’ve spent much of my
life trying to counter the narrative that God is someone to be afraid
of, along with countering the idea that God arbitrarily punishes
people with eternal condemnation. Therefore I can get rather quickly
irritated at scriptures supporting condemnations to hell.

Enter:
this week’s gospel lesson, in which a rich man and a poor man die and
the poor man is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham while
the rich man is being tormented in Hades. HEY BIBLE, I’m trying to
teach people about loving God because God first loved us, NOT trying
to scare people into conformity. COULD YOU TONE IT DOWN A LITTLE?

Obviously
not. Getting myself up in arms about a text doesn’t actually make it
go away, so I’m going to have to deal with this story. I can calmly
remind myself that it is a parable, and parables are meant to help us
break down our assumptions about how the world works, NOT be taken
literally. That helps some. I can remind myself that the Jesus
Seminar doesn’t’ think this story goes back to Jesus, but rather to
Luke. But that doesn’t do too much for me, because I find Luke to be
a pretty significant teacher in his own right.

Or,
I can let the story stand as it is written, try to put my concerns
aside, and see what the story can teach as it is. Which, I’m pretty
sure, is the best way forward.

So,
who is Lazarus? He is a poor man, reduced to begging, whose body was
covered in sores. He was hungry, and he was aching, and the comfort
he received was of dogs licking his wounds for him. Oh my. Unlike
in other parables and unlike the rich man, he is given a name. His
name means “One God has helped.” In having a name, we are
confronted with his humanity. We are invited to look at him, and see
his pain.

Many
of the first followers of Jesus were people like Lazarus. Or people
one step from being people like Lazarus. They knew his pain, they
saw his humanity, they could look at him and see his reality because
it was familiar. They also knew the ways other people looked away
from them, and worked to not see them. They knew people wanted them
to be invisible so they could go on their merry way.

In
a conversation I once witnessed, a person who had recently been
housed was asked about how to best respond to people begging on the
street. While only one opinion, hers has stayed with me. She said
it mattered much less to her if people gave money or not, but it
mattered a lot if they looked at her and acknowledged her. She often
felt invisible, and dehumanized, and someone responding when she
spoke mattered a whole lot.

Lazarus,
I’m thinking, knew what that was like.

Who
was the rich man? We know he was rather seriously rich and had 5
brothers. We also know that he didn’t see Lazarus. Not in the
beginning of the story, nor in the end. He thought Lazarus was
disposable, he thought Lazarus should be sent to do his bidding.
Lazarus should be sent to soothe him, Lazarus should be sent to warn
his brothers. (Not warn EVERYONE, mind you, just his brothers.)

As
Debbie Thomas, theologian and writer of “Journey with Jesus” puts
it:

But here’s the scariest
part of the story for me: even after death, the rich man fails to see
Lazarus.  Privilege just plain clings to him — even
in Hades!  Though he piously calls on “Father” Abraham,
he refuses to see Lazarus as anything other than an errand boy:
“Bring me water.”  “Go warn my brothers.”  No
wonder Abraham tells him that the “chasm” separating the two
realms is too great to cross.  Let’s be clear: God is not
the one who builds the chasm.  We do that all by
ourselves.¹

That
is a scary part, that the things separating us from seeing each
other’s humanity are so powerful that they could remain even beyond
our deaths.

When
I stop myself from having an instantaneous defensive reaction to this
parable, I can see it has some powerful truths. It rejects the
world’s hierarchies, and humanizes everyone. Similarly, it
challenges the assumption about who is “good” or “worthy.”
For those who are living in poverty, it showed them that they were
seen in their full humanity. For those not living in poverty, it
makes people who live in poverty visible. It also makes clear that
the rich man may have been rich, but he was definitely poor in
understanding. Finally, we are reminded that this is not a new
teaching brought by Jesus, but the essence of the Hebrew Bible spoken
in a slightly new way.

Now,
I’m always grateful for reminders like those, but I want to also
point what I don’t think we should take from this parable: I do not
think it should lead us to condeming others to hell; nor to feeling
complacent about this world assuming that what is wrong here will be
fixed “in the next”; I don’t think we should dismiss the rich man
as heartless without looking at who in the world we try not to see;
nor (finally) should we use this parable as permission to dismiss
ANYONE as other – not the rich man, not Lazarus, and not anyone
else either.

One
of the great costs of a theology that includes hell is the idea that
the division between good and bad people is between PEOPLE, instead
of accepting that all of us are good people and bad people, and
trying to work with God to maximize the good. That is, a theology of
hell makes space for us to dehumanize and “other” some of God’s
beloveds.

John
Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, “if your heart
is with my heart, give me your hand.” He understood the
difference between disagreements about details and implementation and
disagreements about what matters in the world. He feared people
would let little things divide them, instead of working together on
the things that really matter.

Similarly,
my colleague Rabbi Matt Culter has invited fellow members of
Schenectady Clergy Against Hate to speak this weekend about divisions
in our society and how to not let them live in our hearts. We have
an election cycle coming up, and as he said, “Intense rhetoric is
only exacerbating the tensions. We are in a unique role to help
de-escalate the tensions that surely will grow in intensity as
the mid-term elections grow closer.” (He didn’t even know about
this parable coming up in the lectionary!)

This
weekend, Rabbi Culter will remind his congregation that every voice
matters so no one should be dismissed, that there is a need to
respect each other’s character – which means not speaking of or to
one another in anger, and finally that we are all on the same
journey.

Now,
I have to admit that I struggle with attempts at peace or unity that
do so at the expense of the vulnerable or minoritized. And I think
there are real differences in vision for our country, ones that
include very different perspectives on – say – Lazarus and the
rich man. I think those are the sorts of differences that matter,
too. AND, I think that those whose values are different from mine
also have reasons why they think their system is best over all, they
are also on this journey called life, they are also worthy of respect
and being heard. (Not the sort of respect that is obedience, the
sort of respect that honors humanity.) I don’t have to agree with
someone or their values to find them worthy of full humanity, care,
access to health care, enough food to eat, and respect.

Divisions
between us make space for hate. Dismissing someone because of a
different point of view makes space for hate. EVEN dismissing
someone for a different set of values makes space for hate.

NOW,
what about the times when someone else’s “point of view” is one
that, say dismisses the humanity of others? For me, the answer comes
from Rev. Dr. King’s sermon “Love Your Enemies” (which quite
clearly also goes back to Jesus, but I like how Dr. King says it)

Now there is a final reason I
think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love
has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that
eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love
your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to
redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies,
you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of
redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even
though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a
neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of
that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them.
Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and
they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the
beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because
you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and
sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period,
but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will
break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive,
and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that
builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears
down and is destructive. “love your enemies.”²

I
wonder what would have resolved the parable? Perhaps, the rich man
seeing Lazarus as a fellow human, another person beloved by God, and
in need of care. Giving him a blanket, or inviting him to a feast,
cleaning his wounds, offering him a job, maybe just letting the table
scraps fall to him, maybe as much as welcoming him into the household
for care. Yes, I know that means another person would have replaced
Lazarus at the gate, maybe two if generosity was known. Because a
single act of mercy doesn’t create social change and prevent people
from being poor. But until the humanity of the rich and the poor can
be seen TOGETHER, the will to change society can’t be created either.

Oh,
also, a pragmatic suggestion: maybe try to use social media less? It
is designed to create division, and we want to create space for love.
Thanks be to God, the God of love.

Amen

1 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2374-the-great-chasm

2 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church

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

September 25, 2022

Uncategorized

“Role Model?” based on Luke 16:1-3

September 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

Parables are not fables. They don’t
teach us a direct lesson that can be immediately applied to living a
good life. Case in point: the parable of the dishonest manager. If
I were giving awards for the most morally ambiguous parable, this one
would be in the running.

For starters, the issue presented is of
a DISHONEST manager, that’s who we’re dealing with as the… hero?
The dishonest manager gets fired, but before the word gets out, he
cancels some of the debt of the owners debtors, presumably aiming to
get hired by one of them for his next gig. So he is dishonest,
underhanded, and self-serving. And he gets commended by the person
who had fired him and used as an example of kindom values by Jesus?

This guy is our role model?

Let no one say the role of the preacher
in interpreting the texts for a modern audience is easy.

But… let’s give this a try.

First of all, I think we better have a
solid sense of this
story in its historical context so that we read less into it and hear
it more as first hearers would have. Here is redacted commentary
from the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

Rich landowners
frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the
household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and
liquidate debts in the name of the master. Such agents were usually
paid in the form of a commission or fee on each transaction they
arranged. While token under-the-table additions to loan contracts
were common, all the principal and interest had to be in a publicly
written contract approved by both parties. There is no warrant for
the frequent assumption here that the agent could exact as much as 50
percent above a contract for his fee. If that had been done, the
rage of the peasants would have immediately been made known to the
landowner ,.. who would have been implicated in the extortion if he
acquiesced. This is clearly not the case in this story.

Traditional
Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss
incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also
be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the
dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been
seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Severe punishment
could be expected. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply
dismissed.

In the case of
the dismissal of an agent, the dismissal was effective as soon as the
agent was informed of it, and from that time forward, nothing the
agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan
worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his
dismissal got to the village. …

The scheme of the
manager is to seek new patrons….

The debtors here
[paid a fixed amount of the produce]. The size of the debts is
extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they
are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of
wheat. Storytelling hyperbole may be involved, or as recent
investigations have suggested, debts are large enough that they may
be the tax debts of an entire village. …

The “rich man”
presumably has …an interpersonal attachment to his manager. Having
discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or
demanding repayment, the manager depends on a similar reaction in the
scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a
peculiar bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks
serious alienation in the village, where villagers would already have
been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the
reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the
manager for having made the “arrangement”) as a noble and
generous man. It is the latter reaction upon which the manager
counts.¹

The more I read about the Jewish
peasants of Jesus day, the more I am convinced that they were well
aware of the systems of injustice that kept them down. I find this
to also be true of people living in poverty today.

I’m not sure if there is an actual
protagonist in this story, really. The rich man is definitely not
seen as a good man, in a society were wealth was assumed to be
stolen. But, the person whose job it was to enable the rich man’s
continued wealth accumulation was ALSO not seen in a positive light.
Many people I know can identify with the managers bind. He was
better off being a manager and getting a decent cut of the accounts
he created than he was in most other positions he was eligible for,
but working for “the man” whose very wealth oppressed others was
also inherently dishonorable work. Or at least, I believe the
peasants would have seen it that way.

And quite often when I think too hard
about what it means to work for “The United Methodist Church”, I
fear it too is inherently dishonorable work, even if I believe
working for THIS church is a moral good. There are SO MANY jobs like
this though. Working for the health care system – YAY, caring for
people! But also, making wealth for investors in insurance
companies. Sigh. Working in education – YAY, teaching people
things they need to know! But also, participating in a system that
maintains income INEQUALITY over lifetimes. Groan. Actually, come
to think of it a lot of jobs, probably most jobs, are really morally
ambiguous given the fact that we live in a society that treats a
large percentage of people as expendable, and the institutions and
systems of society are part of how we maintain this system.

(Right now I feel like John Oliver when
he talks about how incredibly cheery his show.)

So in the midst of the realities of
income inequality, injustice, and violations of Jewish law, comes
this incredibly morally ambiguous parable. I think the way I can
most easily make sense of it is if the debts forgiven are the debts
of the whole village. That brings the whole thing together for me –
including that it suggests the Rich Man owns the whole village which
was common enough in the Roman Empire but INHERENTLY immoral in the
tradition of the Ancient Jews who believed that every family got land
access that could not be taken away from them. This is related to
the banning of INTEREST, which keeps people from being stuck in
poverty cycles. The rich man owning the village means that the
morals of the community have been deeply violated, and both the rich
man and his obsequious servants are at fault.

The post-firing actions of the
dishonest manager have some accidental Robin Hood implications then.
He cancels debt, creates a better balance, eases the lives of the
people. But, it is still pretty clear that he does this FOR HIMSELF,
and the benefit to the people is mostly accidental.

Now, this has some themes that fit
other parables and other teachings of Jesus. There is a value in the
cornering of the rich man into being generous, in winning the
“shrewd” fight, and in taking care of the people, no matter the
intention.

While I believe that the “moral” of
the story is likely tacked on later, the Jesus Seminar thinks it goes
back to Jesus and I think Luke placed it well. “No servant can
serve two masters. No doubt that slave will either hate one and love
the other or be devoted to one and disdain the other. You can’t be
enslaved to both God and a bank account.” The book “Debt: The
History of the First 5000 Years” says that the world’s major
religions emerged IN RESPONSE (to counter) the world’s first market
economies. That is, there started to be an assumption that markets
were GOOD, and defined what life should be, and those who won at the
market deserved it and those who lost at the market deserved it, and
that was just how life was.

In the face of that, religions said,
“nope.” I would make a claim the author didn’t, that this was
related to the Spirit of God NOT being invested in the markets and
the hierarchies they created in the “value” of human life. But,
in a quite literal sense, religions countered the claims of the
market. Money is NOT what matters most. Individual wealth is NOT a
sign of a persons goodness. Instead, all people have value.
Instead, goodness is related to the way All the people are cared for.
Instead, the COMMON GOOD is the definition of a successful society.

God cares for the peasants, even though
the market does not.

This morally ambiguous parable is
likely NOT one we want to take as a simple role model story. BUT, in
the vein of great parables, it is one that invites us into
consideration of our own lives and our own roles. When are we
serving “the rich man” and harming the poor? When are we serving
ourselves, and who is that helping and hurting? When are we serving
the poor, and why? How are we implicated in the systems that
oppress, and how and when are we motivated to shake them up? And,
maybe – when we are backed into a corner afraid for our own
well-being, can we find ways out that help others along the way?

Serving God and not money is not
encouraged in our society. I often fear our economy is the actual
“god” of our society. But the God of our Bible, and the God we
learn about from Jesus is deeply invested in offering us alternatives
to worshipping the economy. Thanks be to God for being worthy of our
worship for being the worthy center of our lives. Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292-3.

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

September 18, 2022

Uncategorized

“Are We Lost?” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

In
simpler times I have heard the parables of the lost coin and the lost
sheep in simpler ways. One can take the perspective of the 99 sheep
or the 9 coins and be rather irked at the ways the 1 is celebrated.
One can take the perspective of the seeker, and join in the joy of
finding the one. One can take the perspective of the outside
observer and wonder if leaving 99 sheep unattended is really the best
way to move towards having 100 sheep, or if throwing a party worth
more than the found coin is the best use of money.

Of
course, there is the most obvious option of taking the perspective of
the lost sheep and being grateful for the shepherd who comes looking
and rescues one from peril (or perhaps pulls you out of a great
tasting meadow, who knows?) Identifying with the sheep is a little
easier than the coin, but nevertheless, the awareness that when we’re
lost we need help is an easy one to turn to.

These
times, beloveds, are not simple times.

In
this time when I read the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin I
think to myself, “are we lost or found?” and I find that the
answer is “I don’t know.” Or, more honestly, the answer is “Yes,
we are lost. Yes, we are found. Yes.”

I
remember preaching in 2016 about the articles I was seeing about how
the 2016 election cycle was doing heavy damage to our country’s
mental health, and therapists were urging people to engage in breaks
from the news, in meditation, in breathing exercises. They were
worried about the stress destabilizing us individually and
collectively. I remember seeing what they were talking about, in
myself and in this church. Tempers were shorter, nuance got lost,
there was more right/wrong and us/them thinking. Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate grew out of that the time, because of the radical
increase in hate crimes.

Here
is the bad news. At this point I think of 2016 as a simpler time.

Sure,
there were oodles of stress. Sure I saw myself, others, and the
church community get worse at basic functioning. Sure, The United
Methodist Church was a dumpster fire. Sure, polarization was at all
time highs. But, that level of communal chronic stress was at that
point relatively new. (We didn’t know it then.)

For
me, the Trump presidency was a daily kick in the gut, or more
specifically in every value I hold dear. And, because I’m not
actually interested in dismissing people because they think
differently from me, I’m aware that for those whose values were
upheld by the Trump presidency, the squeals of horror and outrage
about everything he did ALSO shook them to the core. And, let us
never forget, that foreign adversaries have taken advantage of
differences between us to further polarization, because it benefits
THEM for us to have more HATE in our society.

So,
the stress of the election didn’t settle down. Things kept getting
worse. Then there was the 2019 General Conference of The United
Methodist Church when our denomination doubled down on homophobia and
it became clear that our church at large is not centered in the love
of God. That was a blow, at least to me.

Then
the COVID pandemic began, and we’re sure sick of talking about it,
not to mention living it, I know. But it is relevant here. The
pandemic shook every single part of our society and our lives. And
nothing is the same.

And
quite often we HATE that. Fine, quite often I hate that. It is
disconcerting. It is depressing. It is overwhelming. And then
there are the STILL present challenges of determining where the right
balances are between risks of infecting others with a serious illness
and risks of disconnection and loneliness (which itself can also be
deadly), and the simple deciding is exhausting.

The
stress level has been rising since 2016, sometimes just a slow steady
beat upwards, sometimes in leaps. There are PHYSIOLOGICAL facts
about stress. It makes us less creative. It makes us less
compassionate. It pushes us into black and white thinking. It leads
us into in-group thinking, and making enemies of others. It makes us
selfish.

None
of which look anything like following Jesus. Right?

That’s
a little squirmy for me. That the impacts of stress impede the
capacity to follow Jesus. Because I don’t really get to control
the world and the stresses it throws at me, nor at us. All
of which gets me around to why I think the answer is “yes, we’re
lost.”

But
perhaps you’d like to hear why I think the answer is ALSO, “yes,
we’re found?”

The
starting and ending point of “we’re found’ are quite simple: I do
not believe it is possible to wander away from God. Or, at least, it
is not possible to wander beyond the reaches of God’s love. And, as
God is everywhere, anywhere we are is with God, and God knows where
we are, so we are found. (By God.)

But,
in case that isn’t actually enough for you (although, it is rather a
lot), I’d like to point out what you are doing RIGHT NOW. You are
listening to a sermon. Now, I don’t know all of your personal
reasons for why you do that, but I know some things. I know you have
lots of other things you could be doing, and when you do this you are
making a choice. There seems to be strong evidence that you would
listen to a sermon because you are interested in what makes a good
life and/or in how to live a Godly life and/or in considering how to
get from the world as it is to the world as God would have it be. It
could be you are looking for reasons for hope, or looking for
analysis of what’s going on, or to make meaning of the world, or to
make meaning of life, or maybe you are mostly doing this because
other people you like also do this and you want to connect with them.

Those,
dear ones, are really beautiful reasons to do a thing.

I
remain shocked that this thing we know as church exists. Hear me
out! So, a bunch of people connect with each other and are connected
by their shared commitment to God and living as followers of Jesus.
So they create spaces to work together and worship together. They
give significant gifts of time to caring for the needs of the church
and the community, to learning together and playing together and
doing important things together.

Then,
and this is the one that keeps on shocking me, they give MONEY to the
church. Enough to PAY STAFF even (AND take care of the building,
another miracle). Staff to help take care of the resources (sexton,
building), staff to take care of the community (breakfast cook),
staff to take care of the communication and connections
(administrative assistant), and even staff to take the time to listen
to the world and the Bible and the people and try to help make sense
of things (pastor.)

I
am amazed that you all do this. It is INSANE.

You
realize how much time, energy, money, and frustration you’ve given to
this place right? When people say “church family” they may in
fact be reflecting that some of the demands family puts on our lives
is similar to the demands church puts on their lives.

But
this is also GOOD NEWS. Because in the midst of this world, people
are giving of themselves in hope that what we do together is part of
building better lives and a better world. Lives are changed here, by
friendship, by theology, by study, by singing, by hope. We are more
together than we could ever be apart.

And
even now, even when everything is different, even when showing up is
in multiple mediums and often feels SO strange compared to what we
knew in the past – even now, you all keep on caring enough to
listen, to try, to work towards good. And that’s about as “found”
as I can imagine existing. I am, quite honestly, profoundly moved
that you exist and keep on keeping on.

There
is a final piece to this though. It isn’t just that we are lost and
we are found, as two separate pieces. It is also that we are lost
and found, both at the same time, and that has its own truth. This
week I got an email from a clergy coach who talked about this, and
while I want to share everything Rev. Lauren Stephens-Reed said, I’m
condensing to this:

leading
innovation is about getting people to co-create the future with you.
This
kind of approach is warranted when your purpose is clear but the
future is not. Is there any better descriptor of – any greater need
in – this time in the Church, in the world?

I
do believe our purpose is clear. We are co-creating the kindom of
God with God. We work together to promote the idea that the kindom
and its values are important, to help each other learn in order to
build the kindom, and to help each other live its values. We don’t
know everything, but we do know that some of the prime values of the
kindom are love, justice, compassion, and inclusion, so we work on
those. We are going it TOGETHER because we believe we are more
together than apart.

So,
we don’t know how to get to the future.

That’s
OK.

God
does, and God will lead us, TOGETHER.

We
are lost dear ones, and we are found, dear ones. And it is hard but
it is OK. Thanks be to God. 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

September 11, 2022

Uncategorized

“To Be Known” based on Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 and…

September 4, 2022
by Sara Baron

For
years now, the book of Philemon has tickled my funny bone. That fact
is now making me squirm.

It
made me laugh cause I read it from a logical perspective, and I was
amused by the choice of argument style. I thought it was
manipulative, but brilliant. From this angle, the line “For this
reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your
duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love–and I,
Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ
Jesus” is potent. Paul points out his power, steps back from it,
but then adds layers of guilt about his age and his position as a
prisoner to strengthen his claim that what he wants should be given
to him “freely.”

Taken
from a pure logic perspective, it is a strong argument, and indeed
manipulative.

But
I wonder what made me take it from a logic perspective.

Because
when I read it now, it sounds like it is an honest emotional appeal.
The gist is that Paul has come to love and depend on Onesimus. Paul
would like to have Onesimus with him, but decides that the right
thing to do is let Philemon make his own decision. It is pretty
clear Paul isn’t enjoying doing the right thing, sending the letter
to Philemon with Onesimus and awaiting the response (hopefully coming
back with Onesimus) is hard. He doesn’t want to be separated even
that long.

Paul
does the right thing, and he does it while making every appeal he can
to Philemon for the thing he needs.

Now,
Paul’s request is not small. Onesimus is a slave belonging to
Philemon, and Paul requests that Philemon free Onesimus, recognize
him as an equal in the Body of Christ, and then send him back to Paul
as a free person to serve the Body of Christ by accompanying Paul as
a companion and equal.

That’s
really living out the line Paul wrote in Galatians. “There is no
longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
(3:28) Paul says that now that Onesimus is in Christ, it doesn’t
make sense for him to be the slave of another person with whom he is
“one in Christ Jesus.”

This
is about as radical of a notion as one could have. It upends the
entire economic, familial, and societal structure of Paul’s time. It
is VERY Jesus like. It is the reasonable extension of Jesus’s
teaching. It simply disregards the known hierarchies of the world
and replaces them with the bonds of human affection and equality in
the eyes of God.

This
is ignoring everything but the love of God, and appealing on the
basis of that love for things to be different.

And
Paul actually asks for it. He doesn’t just write about it, doesn’t
just indicate this would be an appropriate way to follow Jesus. He
asks for it, in real time, because he both believes in it and because
he needs it to be true.

The
emotions and needs behind his request are what make me uncomfortable
with my prior interpretation. I’ve been working on becoming more
attentive to my own feelings and needs, as well as learning to see
and name other people’s feelings and needs. I’ve been working on
this for a decade and it makes a difference, but I still have plenty
of work to do.

Maybe
I’ve been in too many manipulative situations where people aren’t
honest about their needs, or I’ve felt backed into the corner, or
disregarded and unheard. Maybe that’s why I’ve read this as if Paul
was trying to manipulate Philemon. But right now, it really looks to
me like he is laying all his cards on the table, and yet making his
request one that Philemon gets to decide about. He asks, he
explains, he offers what he can offer, but he makes space for
Philemon to do what Philemon will do.

He
makes a request of Philemon, not a demand. Maybe because it seems
like it would be really hard to say no to this request, maybe that’s
why I read it as manipulative. But Paul asks, and doesn’t demand.
Paul doesn’t use his authority to decree. He ASKS. It is almost as
if, despite his role as a church leader, he doesn’t hold himself
above other people of faith.

You
know, this letter is making me love Paul a little more.

I
love his love for Onesimus, and I love his honesty in really needing
Onesimus with him. I think I particularly love that last part
because it is so … not stoic. Paul isn’t sitting in prison saying,
“I’m fine, no worries.” He is sitting in prison saying, “this
is really much nicer with someone I love around, and I’d like to keep
having that.”

Now,
maybe you are thinking to yourself, “well, sure, someone who is
confined to PRISON deserves
a little bit of comfort and support.” If so, thank God! I’m a
little bit tired of the narrative that people who get confined to
prisons somehow stop being human and stop needing basic human things
like edible food and human connection.

But,
anyway, if you were thinking to yourself that it was OK for Paul to
ask for some comfort in prison in his old age, then I’d invite you to
take the compassion and apply it to yourself. You, too, have needs,
you too have the right to try to get them met. Regardless of age or
imprisonment status.

When
I say needs I am saying things that could fall under categories like
autonomy, connection, meaning, peace, physical well-being, and play.
I’m not JUST talking about food, water, and shelter although those
are part of physical well-being. The other categories are ALSO
universal human needs, ones we ALL have that impact everything about
our lives.

I’m
making the radical claim that in the letter to Philemon, Paul is
showing himself to be a human being with needs, and that reminds us
that we are human beings with needs too. And we, too, have the right
to find ways to get those needs met. I think that it may be true
that in our society claiming everyone has needs AND a right to seek
to meet those needs almost as radical as Paul saying that a slave
should be freed because of equality in Christ.

Now,
this brings me around to Psalm 139 which may or may not have made you
a little bit uncomfortable. Someone asked me in late June what text
is used to claim that the Bible is against abortion, and my reply
was, “Huh, I don’t know. Cause it isn’t there. But maybe they use
Psalm 139?” After all, verse 13 does refer to a human being known
by God even before birth when they say, “For it was you who formed
my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

However,
that doesn’t say what people say it says. Psalm 139 also talks about
God knowing what we have to say before the words are on our tongues.
The idea that God knows us before we are born is a way of saying that
God us before we even ARE.

When
I take away the ways Psalm 139 has been misused, I find it rather
comforting. God knows us, sees us, is with us, AND LOVES us. God’s
love isn’t some generic thing, nor based on how we preform. God
knows AND love us as we are. We have no secrets from God.

That
is, God knows our feelings and our thoughts, and our needs. God
doesn’t expect us to be able to pretend away our needs, or push away
our feelings. God KNOWS them with us, and works with us to get our
needs met and our feelings acknowledged.

God
isn’t asking us to be perfect or stoic, cause God knows what it is
like to be us. That’s comforting.

Now,
it is possible that some of you are wondering why this matters, and
why I’m making such a huge point about having needs, and it being OK,
and working to get them met. Because these are not exactly the most
obvious points to make from our scriptures today. One piece of this
is that discovering that I TOO was a human who also had needs and
that wasn’t WRONG was a pretty big deal to me. I knew there were
universal human needs, sure, but for a very long time I still though
I was supposed to be exempt from that, and I’d like to help you let
that go too if you hold that idea.

But
also, I think there is a lot of fear around being human and having
needs and being “needy.” There is a sense that it is weak or bad
or something. And I think that does a whole lot of damage to the
world and the church. And I think that if we are going to matter to
each other, if we are going to be a community who loves each other
and helps each other grow, if we are going to matter to the world, if
we are going to be people who meet others where they are – then
we need to get more comfortable with our humanity and our needs. I
think this is a way TOWARDS God.

To
be specific, I hear in this church profound fear of talking about
conflict. There is a sense that if we talk about things we’ve
disagreed about, everything may blow up and we will regret it.

I
believe that if we brush aside our feelings and our needs, if we
pretend away our disagreements, if we sweep our history under the
rug, it will poison us from the inside. I believe that the hardest
things about being a church are the ways that old conflicts never got
resolved and keep on bringing new hurts, and if we keep on doing that
we won’t be able to keep on functioning.

AND,
here is the good news in all of this. If we can hold on to our own
needs, and make space for other people’s needs, conflict gets a whole
lot less scary!! If I have a need for space, ease, and
self-expression while you have a need for connection, and efficacy
and closeness that could lead us to conflict pretty fast, right?
BUT, if instead of blaming me for my need for space or blaming you
for your need for connection we just took those as givens, we could
find some really cool ways to meet both of our needs.

(Summary:
blame is not useful in conflict nor conflict resolutions, but needs
themselves are fine and can help us find win-wins.)

I
believe in a God of win-wins. I believe in a God who knows us and
likes us and is at peace with our needs and would like us to be. I
believe in a God who of equality and equity who has no commitment
whatsoever to the hierarchical systems of any age. And I believe God
is with us, willing and able to work with us in this community and
this church. We don’t need to throw our needs to get to God or
connect with each other. Instead, like Paul, we can acknowledge what
we need and ask each other for help. May God help us find the
strength to be so vulnerable! 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

September 4, 2022

Uncategorized

“The Art of Choosing What to Do With Your…

August 28, 2022
by Sara Baron

I lack the patience and the
commitment to read any newspaper or magazine cover to cover, but I do
scan headlines and read what looks interesting. Two weeks ago there
was an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, “The Art of
Choosing What to Do With Your Life” which caught my attention. It
was a plea for liberal arts education to include in their curriculum
“initiating students into a culture of rational reflection on how
to live”.^¹
I found myself both emphatically agreeing with their ideas about
helping people make conscious decisions about how they wanted to live
their lives, and also getting a little bit offended at the idea that
this is particularly the role of education and not faith. But, once
I became aware of my sense of being offended, I realized that I’m
actually all for sharing and not being possessive over meaning
making. Phew.

Also,
as I continued to read, I found myself laughing that the ways they
are teaching their students about building a meaningful life is by
using one of the greatest teachers of the Christian tradition. This
really isn’t a competition! They said:

Aquinas
usefully suggests that the ultimate objects of human longing can be
sorted into only eight enduring categories. If we want to understand
where we’re headed, we should ask ourselves these questions: Am I
interested in this opportunity because it leads to wealth? Or am I
aiming at praise and admiration? Do I want enduring glory? Or power —
to “make an impact”? Is my goal to maximize my pleasures? Do I
seek health? Do I seek some “good of the soul,” such as knowledge
or virtue? Or is my ultimate longing to come face-to-face with the
divine?^²

The
authors point out that some of those first options (wealth, praise)
don’t work out to bring a satisfying life. Now, having started
reading that article with both interest and caution, I came around to
thinking that it was a useful article for church too!

Because,
it occurred to me, those are valid questions for us too. Both
individually and collectively, but today I’m talking about
collectively.

“The
Art of Choosing What to Do With Your Life as a Church”

Thinking
that way, we can eliminate some of the options. We are not a church
so we can build wealth, be praised, gain glory, or simply maximize
pleasure. Occasionally I think we do want some power so we can make
an impact, but that isn’t an end goal in itself, and I think we know
that. I sometimes note that being part of a community is good for
one’s health, and community connections are good for community
health, but that too is an aside and not a primary goal.

Which
is to say, that I think only the last two questions are likely to
have significant resonance: Do we seek some ‘good of the soul’ such
as knowledge or virtue? Or, do we primarily seek to connect people
to the Divine? I’d love to hear your answers and reflections on
this. I’m going to offer my best guess as to this community’s
answer, but please note I’m ALSO wanting to hear what you think!

The
thing is, that I don’t think every church has the same reason for
existing. And I suspect our reasons may be quite different from the
norm. That is, I think many churches exist to make more Christians –
as an end goal in itself, which for them is related to keeping people
out of hell. This may be simply about saying a proscribed set of
words, or may be about living a particular set of rules, but avoiding
hell is the end game. Other churches exist, I think, to praise God.
This strikes me as a far more worthy use of time and energy, but, if
I’m honest, not the one that resonates here. (OK, I do think it is
better, but I also am not convinced it is a sufficient end it
itself.)

Around
here we most often talk about our goal as “building the kindom of
God,” and I suspect that falls most directly under seeking good of
the soul, with an awareness that connecting to the Divine is quite
important for building up the desire and capacity to build the
kindom.

Lee
Tupper wrote convincingly that the point of the church is to
“optimize prime values.” I’d take that to be another way of
saying the thing about good for the soul. Lee put it this way:

A
desirable function for the church is to aid in shaping personal value
systems so that they are consistent with prime values. The ultimate
objective of this process is maximizing the degree to which the human
system evolves to ever-higher levels. … The function of the church
here is a crucial one. It
involves three major facets – the first is that of the promotion of
the idea that a concern with this subject is important, the second
is to help in the continued educational process necessary to
understand its implication and the third is to aid people in carrying
out the activities necessary to achieve these objectives.”^³

Lee
was humble about naming the prime values themselves, but took as
examples, love and justice which I’m entirely convinced are prime
values as well. Love and justice, and I’m pretty sure compassion
too, are means toward the kindom.

It
turns out that this wondering about why we exist as a church and what
we think we are aiming to do matters… say, rather a lot. It
impacts everything about what we do and how we make decisions, who we
are and who we seek to become. It impacts what we are trying to do
when we worship, what I am trying to do when I preach, how we related
to our communities and neighbors, what we prioritize, and how we
decide what to let go of. I think it also relates to how we
experience and understand God and God’s wishes for us and our
communities and society.

The
Art of Choosing What to Do With Your Life as a Church matters quite a
lot.

I
think this is obvious, but just to be sure, let’s look at an example.
If the primary goal of a church is to save people from going to hell
by having them profess a faith in Jesus, it would make sense that
they’d put a lot of energy into evangelism, and teaching effective
evangelism, and that worship would be both focused on emphasizing how
good it is to believe in Jesus and how bad it is in afterlife if one
doesn’t. Right? It all follows.

However,
“building the kindom of God” is a really multifaceted thing. It
is not as well defined as a goal as getting people to speak some
particular phrase. Even as we get clearer that building the kindom
is related to optimizing prime values, and that that means “the
first is that of the promotion of the idea that a concern with this
subject is important, the second is to help in the continued
educational process necessary to to understand its implication and
the third is to aid people in carrying out the activities necessary
to achieve these objectives,”
and even if we took as the three prime values love, justice, and
compassion – we are still dealing with multifaceted ways forward.

How
does one build up love? Is it best to start with one’s self and
build up self compassion? Is it best to deepen relationships with
loved ones, and build up skills in good listening and communication?
Is it best to seek out new relationships particularly with people who
are different -and if so, people who are different HERE, or people
who are different in another part of the country or world? Or, do we
best build up love by savoring the love of God and letting it
infiltrate our lives?

You
see how it isn’t entirely clear?

This
has been a struggle for this church for decades at least, a desire
for better clarity of purpose and a reality that it is really
complicated. But, I’d like to point something out that maybe hasn’t
been a sufficient part of this conversation.

What
this church has been doing for these decades has WORKED. How do I
know? Because this church is full of people of mature, thoughtful,
careful, LOVING, JUSTICE-SEEKING, COMPASSIONATE faith. Both those of
you who have been here all along and those of you who arrived here
and discovered it fit who you are are living proof that something
here is working. People are becoming more loving, more
justice-oriented, more compassionate in their time here. These are
shared values. These are lived values. When we, as a church, make
decisions, these are inherently in the conversations, and we end up
discussing how to best live them out.

I
have seen very few other faith communities that so effectively build
up people of faith in these ways. I admit to being a little confused
as to how it happens, because we definitely don’t have a linear
educational paradigm to develop it, but something here WORKS.

The
kindom of God is being built by this community and by the people of
this community in the places they go. We’re doing the stuff we want
to do!

We’re
living our values! We’re working with God! We’re existing in a way
we care about!

THIS
IS AWESOME – and we should probably celebrate it more.

Those
dry cisterns of Jeremiah – those aren’t ours! We’re in the fountain
of living water. Those exclusivist banquets that poor people can’t
attend because they can’t reciprocate? Those aren’t ours. We are
intentionally offering banquets for those who aren’t going to invite
us back.

A
commentator on Luke said, “Exclusive fellowship required an
exclusive table, while inclusive fellowship required an inclusive
one.^⁴”
That was beautifully said, and seems to name another prime value
around here: inclusion. We often ask ourselves about what inclusion
looks like and how to create intersectional inclusion.

Dear
ones, there are a lot of leaking, empty cisterns out there. I’d lump
all of the competitive values of the world into those. But God is
faithful. There are a lot of ways to be church, and I’m not sure
ours is the easiest, but it is a really great one, and it is WORKING.
We’re transforming each other into more loving, more just, more
compassionate, more inclusive beings and taking those values and
skills into the world. Or maybe we’re just making space together for
God to do the changing – I really don’t know how it happens.

We
are people of an inclusive fellowship, of taking the bottom seat, of
inviting everyone to the banquet. And it matters. And it is going
to keep mattering. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that it isn’t
always clear is part of how we have developed some skills at it –
we’ve had to struggle and that’s helped us grow. Thanks be to God.
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

August 28, 2022

1 Benjamin
Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, “The Art of Choosing What to Do
With Your Life” in the New York Times, August 15, 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/opinion/college-students-happiness-liberal-arts.html,
accessed again 8/25/2022

2 Ibid.

3 L.C.
Tupper “Eschatology and Related Matters” Nov. 20, 1976.

4 Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Meals”.

Uncategorized

“Queen Sabbath” based on Isaiah 58:9b-14 and Luke 13:10-17

August 21, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’m
not sure when Sabbath got lost. Perhaps it was a well intentioned
thing, a part of recognizing that Christianity isn’t the only way to
be in the world, and making space for other traditions. After all,
Christians and Jews both have traditions of Sabbath, but on different
days. (We changed ours to line up with a weekly celebration of
Easter.)

I
suspect, though, that what really happened was the long term impact
industrial revolution and the desire of factory owners to get more
profit from their expensive machines by having them worked for more
hours.

I
don’t know for sure though.

I
do know that Sabbath is lost.

And
I also know that it is problem.

Because
before I can even talk about Sabbath I need to acknowledge that the
minimum wage is so low in our country that people can’t live off of
full time work, and people working multiple jobs often cannot afford
to take a day off. That is, our MINIMUM wage is so low that people
can’t afford to live without working themselves to death.

Additionally,
and I think intersectedly, many retail, restaurant, and other low
paying jobs like to schedule erratically and at the last minute,
keeping workers hopping to get to work and pick up hours at any time
of the week. And they punish those who put boundaries on their
working hours.

Additionally,
and I think this TOO is intersected with it all, we live in a culture
that values overwork and expects it of most people in even salaried
positions. The expectations on teachers beyond their working hours
are obscene, and that seems to apply from pre-school teachers to
college professors. And, they’re not unique. Medical professionals
have hours and hours of unpaid paperwork to do beyond their paid
labor. Rare – and valuable – is the job that pays a livable wage
and expects only 40 hours a week of work.

In
the book “It’s Not You, It’s Everything”, Eric Minton helped me
put together what’s going on under all this pressure. I already knew
that businesses, institutions, and non-profits are all trying to get
as much as they can out of their workers – even when they have
fewer workers and more work. But Minton points out that the social
inequality of our society helps to maintain the frenetic work life of
our society. That is, because people can fall through the cracks and
become homeless, and/or food insecure, and/or lose everything to
medical bills, and because this happens on a terrifyingly regular
basis, our whole society is in a rat race to not be the ones
struggling the hardest.

Middle
school and high school kids are experiencing unprecedented anxiety
and mental health issues. Ones that look a lot like the ones their
parents have. And this is what is under all that: an assumption that
if you don’t work hard enough and pass that French test with a high
enough grade, you won’t get into a good college, you won’t get a good
job, and you could end up bankrupt, homeless, and food insecure. For
some kids, whose families already live some of those realities, that
French test is already eclipsed by the need to get a job and bring
home some money to prevent eviction, or to buy some food.

By
having an insufficient safety net in our society, we motivate people
to work hard and harder throughout their lives (which does
effectively enrich the already rich) to try to prevent themselves
form being the ones who fall through the net. And to keep this all
going, we have a societal narrative that the ones who do fall through
that safety net just didn’t try hard enough.

This
couldn’t be any further from God’s desires.

This
couldn’t be any further from the practice of Sabbath, either.

Walter
Brueggemann has been my primary teacher on the meaning of Sabbath in
the Hebrew Bible, and here he is commenting on our Isaiah passage for
this week:

Sabbath is the alternative to a
restless, aggressive, unbridled acquisitiveness that exploits
neighbor for self-gain. The ancient command provided rest for
members of the community and for all the household members including
workers (Deut 5:12-15) All will rest and enjoy the abundance of
creation (Exod. 20:8-11). Sabbath is a cessation of feverish anxiety
and control. But the people addressed here are strangers to the
sabbath. They “oppress all your workers” (v. 3) and impose a
cycle of exploitation. That is, the disciplined act of finding life
outside of feverish acquisitiveness is rejected by serving one’s own
interests.¹

Now,
I’ve been talking this whole time as if you all know what I mean by
Sabbath. On a practical level, Sabbath is taking a day off from
productivity and consumption every week in order to focus on
relationships and others things that bring LIFE. For Jews, this is
practiced on Saturdays, for most of Christian history this was
practiced on Sundays, and at this point any day or even a revolving
day is a great thing.

The
Bible says that we rest every 7 days because God rested after
creation. And that we NEED that rest to maintain our full humanity.
The Bible is also explicit that this isn’t just something that
landowners or rich people get, it is for everyone, and sometimes the
Bible even includes WORK ANIMALS in the expression of Sabbath.
Clearly humanity has been practicing various forms of work
exploitation for a LONG LONG time, and those listening for God’s
voice heard the commandment for Sabbath, to ensure that people get to
live and not just work themselves to death.

Now,
in Luke, there appears to be a debate over Sabbath, but is a strange
one. What is strange is that the healing that Jesus did wasn’t a
violation of Sabbath and pretty much everyone agreed on that. The
healing was seen as a gift from God, so it wasn’t “labor” on
Jesus’ part (this is not to dismiss the labor that is medical care
today). And the healing brought the woman back into the community.
One of the interesting side effects of Sabbath is that by stopping
work and focusing on relationships, Sabbath ALSO creates community.
So doing something that healed a woman and her community was a very
Sabbath activity.

So
what was the Synagogue leader upset about? I don’t know for sure,
and the story doesn’t tell us, but to project onto it a little bit,
perhaps the faith leader felt insecure about his work and leadership
and threatened by the clear connection between Jesus and God and was
trying to reestablish what felt like slipping control? Again, who
knows 😉

But,
let us be clear, Jewish practice of Sabbath didn’t prevent Jesus from
healing, Sabbath is meant to be a source of life and life abundant,
and the Jewish crowd clearly understood and agreed with Jesus’
assessment that freeing a woman from bondage was worth doing on the
Sabbath.

So
what does this all mean? How do we respond to our tradition of
Sabbath, the reminders of what it means, the affirmations that it
connects us to God, the concerns about its misuse, and the desire
from God that we might live life and live it abundantly?

(And
why can’t I ever just ask easy questions?)

I
think there are a lot of conclusions that can be drawn from this
conversation. One big one is about continuing to work for justice in
our society, to work towards making it possible for all people to
have regular life giving time off, and to work towards securing the
societal safety net so that people don’t slip through. But another
piece of this is about HOW we work towards justice, and that means
working towards justice while also taking Sabbath. We can’t
effectively bring love, peace, and justice into the world if we don’t
experience them. Those of us who can have Sabbath need to take it,
for ourselves, for our faith, for our community, for our families,
for God, and for the sake of those who can’t yet. We won’t get other
people closer to full and whole lives by working ourselves to death
either. We have to both work for justice and savor the goodness of
life.

So,
what if, say, you are retired and not even working any more? What
might Sabbath look like for you? I’d recommend picking a day (maybe
Saturday or Sunday) and circling it in your calendar. Then, use it
to connect with those you love, or to do things you love. BUT, keep
away from productivity. No cleaning out closets. No vacuuming. No
filing. No reading church meeting minutes. ALSO, no consumption or
shopping. If possible, keep your Sabbath from being one that makes
other people work. Just…. people you love, spiritual practices, and
activities that bring you life. EVERY WEEK, and without guilt. This
is important, and it brings unexpectedly wonderful changes.

For
the rest of us, if we are lucky enough to be able to, let’s do the
same! And for those who can’t, yet, we’re seeking it with you. May
God help us get there. May Sabbath be found again. Amen

1Walter
Brueggeman, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998) 193.

August 21, 2022

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