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Uncategorized

“Forgetting” based on  Psalm 126 and Isaiah 43:16-21

  • April 3, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

The Isaiah passage seems so
cheerful, but it is actually a tough one.  It asks people to let go
of the faith of the past to pay attention to what God is doing in the
present.  And while that sounds great and all, for most of us, our
faith is pretty deeply rooted in the past, for good reasons, and
we’re not that interested in letting go of it.

That’s the always reason.  The
2022 reason builds on it.  A lot of us are rather sick and tired of
new things, and would rather be able to settle into some of the old
things we miss a lot.

Please count me among those who
are struggling with this.  This week a small group of us met with a
team to talk about the technology we’ll need to move towards
livestreaming our service.  They asked great questions, and I found
that I kept answering with, “well, before the pandemic…., right
now…., but I don’t know what the answer is in 2 years.”  I miss
being able to answer simple questions with simple answers!

When I think about what our
church life looked like in February of 2020, I’m astounded at the
changes.  I can barely remember the simplicity of ONE worship
service, and I didn’t adequately appreciate the wonder that was
people being able to be together in a room, safely.  I sort of
remember church night, a time with 4 or 5 meetings, and having to
figure out who met in what room – instead of which zoom account to
use for which meeting.  I remember children’s times on the steps of
the sanctuary when I got to talk to kids, and we could see each
other’s faces, a time I miss deeply.  I remember seeing people’s
faces when I was preaching, and getting a sense of what made worked
and what didn’t, and being able to adapt.  I miss that.  I miss
parking lot conversations (am I allowed to admit that), and the
church office being loud when people ran into each other, and I
really really miss SUSTAIN ministry.  I miss choir anthems, and the
sound I heard behind me during worship when I erred in following the
bulletin and choir members were trying to figure out if it was
important enough to tell me.  I miss greeting our breakfast guests at
the door, and watching people chit chat with each other.  Oh my, do I
miss communion after church, and also rushing to finish it so we
could get to a 2nd hour!

When I hear, “do not remember
the former things, or consider the things of old,” that’s a hard
line to take in.  Those things were sacred.  They helped me know my
place in the world.  They were important, and meaningful, and lovely,
and I struggle to let them go.  

I invite you to think about, and
even name those things you miss.  (in comments / outloud)  

There is a power in naming those
things, in acknowledging what we’ve lost, and how hard it is to have
lost it.

There is something of a
scholarly debate over which “things of old” the Exiles were being
invited to forget.  The way I hear it, they’re all a bit
controversial, because ours is a faith that REMEMBERS.  Yet, “for
everything there is a season,” so… this is a different sort of
call.  #newthing.  

Some say that what the Exiles
are being invited to forget – so that they can see what God is up
to in the present – is the Exodus itself.  God who made a way
through the sea, God who saved them from chariot and horse, God who
got them free from slavery – they’re being told FORGET THAT, and
watch what God is up to NOW.  That’s a pretty big ask, huh?

Others say it is BIGGER.

Others say it is creation itself
the Exiles are being asked to forget, so they can see what God is up
to in the present.  That the references to water reflect the acts of
creation of separating the waters, and the land from the water, and
instead of remembering CREATION, the Exiles are asked to forget that,
and pay attention to the present to see what God is up to NOW.
That’s a pretty big ask, huh?

Still others say it isn’t the
two biggest foundations of their faith that people are being asked to
forget, but instead it is the destruction and fear of the Exile
itself – which was what most of Isaiah 1-39 was predicting.  The
Exiles are being asked to forget the circumstances by which they came
to be exiles in Babylon, and focus instead of what God is up to in
the NOW.  So – that may well be the biggest ask of all.

These are some rather enormous
things to be asked to forget, in order to pay attention to the
present, and that rather suggests that we are not exempted from this
because of a world-changing pandemic either.  So, the past being let
go of, even at rather exceptional cost, lets us continue in this
passage.

And now we hear, “I am about
to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you do you not perceive
it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I
give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to
my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they
might declare my praise”  (43:19-21)

The premise of this passage,
that holding on to the past can distract us from the ways God is at
work in the present – that’s true.  I don’t want us to go overboard
and throw out the past, which probably isn’t possible anyway.  But, I
do want to enter into this idea.

Where is God present NOW, among
us, in new ways?  Are we looking?  Are we paying attention?  Have we
freed our spirits and our focus to see what God is up to NOW, by
letting go of what we perceived God to be up to in the past??

God, as we know, is ALWAYS
pushing past the status quo.  God isn’t going to let up seeking
justice for all of God’s beloveds, until there is JUSTICE and PEACE
and COMPASSION and WHOLENESS for ALLLLLLLLLL of God’s beloveds.  

Which can mean that when the
world changes directions, the way God’s moves among us changes too.

The Exiles in Isaiah 43 were in
a new place.  God’s advocacy for quite a while had been for them to
attend to their own teachings, to create a society with equity, to
care for the impoverished and vulnerable, to dismantle the power
structures, to provide justice within the justice system, and to
disentangle themselves from external empires who would do them harm.


But then the Exile happened,
and the external empire did them harm, and they no longer had the
power to enact God’s vision in the land – as the Exiles weren’t
even IN the land.

So God’s movement among them was
going to be different.  God was now planting seeds of hope, God was
replanting dreams of a just society, God was helping them in the
midst of despair, and maybe most of all, God was inviting them into
their present – to BE WHERE THEY WERE instead of JUST grieving
where they were no longer.

It is, of course, notable, that
God dreams a future for them, in order to help them move from the
past to the present, but perhaps that’s part of what is needed.  We
need to know where we’re going.

And that, dear ones, is a part
of what is hard right now.  So much remains in flux, and it is far
from easy to see where we are going to land.

In fact, I think this has been a
struggle in this community for a rather long time.  Going back for
decades, there have been various ways of trying to vision the future,
all of which petered out with some form of “but there are too many
variables,” only to have the process repeated a few years later.

Ok.  So.  There are too many
variables to know the future.  That’s TRUE.  That’s always been true,
but my goodness things change fast these days, and faster now than
ever.  I’m aware of this, I’ve been the one updating the post on the
church’s facebook page telling people what worship looks like in our
community, and I’ve LOST COUNT of how many updates I’ve had to make
over the past 2 years.  

Perhaps it might be of use to
think about what we do know, about the present as well as the future:

God is with us.

God is faithful.

God’s steadfast love endures
forever.

God dreams of goodness, joy,
peace, healing, wholeness, justice, and equity for all of creation.

We are on God’s team to make
that dream a reality.

I don’t know much more than
that.  I don’t know what worship will look like in a year or two, or
what ministry may emerge out of the communities need and the energy
we once placed in Sustain.  I don’t know how many “access points”
we will have for people to be part of this community, or when we’ll
get to livestreaming, when we can finally hear from Bishop Karen
Oliveto.  Right now I don’t know when we might get an applicant for
our Sexton position, or put together the job description for a new
permanent musician, just have church council in person.  (Come on
Moderna application for young kids to be vaccinated, I’m rooting for
you SO HARD.)

There is so much we don’t know,
and that’s hard.  I think that’s part of why it is so easy to focus
on the past, which at least we knew and understood.  But the past can
hold us hostage, particularly in moments like this when we run to it
out of discomfort in the present.

God IS up to new things today.
God isn’t happy with letting the unjust practices and lack of
compassion stand.  And I know that we want to be attentive to God in
this time.  So, I’m going back that list of what we know.

God is with us.

God is faithful.

God’s steadfast love endures
forever.

God dreams of goodness, joy,
peace, healing, wholeness, justice, and equity for all of creation.
(Shorter version: God is working for the kindom.)

We are on God’s team to make
that dream a reality.

I invite us all to center
ourselves on those truths.  

Perhaps you will find that there
are a few more we can add, and I’d be delighted to hear them.
Perhaps you are one of the ones you can see what God is up to right
now, and I invite to share right now (comments/ out loud.)

This I know: God is up to new
things.

This I wonder: Are we on board?

Amen

Uncategorized

“A Lost Family” based on  Joshua 5:9-12 and Luke…

  • March 27, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I spend a lot of my time learning about trauma, and
considering ways that the church might be part of trauma healing.  If
I had a guess as to why this catches my attention so deeply, it would
be this: as I grew up and realized how broken things are, I started
wondering “why!?”  Until I heard about the Adverse Childhood
Experiences study, and started reading about trauma, very little
seemed to adequately answer my question.

So it may not be surprising that when I read Joshua, and
hear “today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt, “
I find myself wondering about trauma healing.  The story says that
the people had been enslaved for hundreds of years, and then spent 40
years wandering in the desert, as a means of leaving behind that
trauma and preparing for the new life they were going to live.  This
passage, today, is the moment of transition.

In life,  there isn’t an end to healing as a gradual
lessening of the grasp trauma holds on a life.  But, also, 40 years
sounds like a good time frame.  It is not instantaneous, by any
stretch, and it represented multiple generational changes.  It takes
seriously the long tail of healing, and the impact on generations.

I don’t really think the story means that the trauma of
slavery is over for the ancient people of God.  But, I think this is
another step in that process.  To be told, “your disgrace is rolled
away” is a really important piece, and I rather respect it taking
40 years for the people to be ready to hear it.

I also love that there is this intersection of healing
and relationship.  So for those 40 years, the people were said to be
fed directly by God.  The manna on the floor of the desert provided
for them, along with occasional quail.  Or, perhaps we might say,
they were hunter-gatherers and aware in that process of their
dependence on God.  This passage represents a shift to being farmers,
who are still rather dependent on God, but take more of the
responsibility for active food production (especially in a desert).

While healing, the people needed to be cared for.  They
also needed to be able to move freely.  They needed space.  They
needed time.  They needed a dependable caregiver to keep on teaching
them that they could trust.  

When they had healed enough, and when they were ready to
hear “your disgrace has been rolled away” which I think means
“you are no longer defined by what others did to you,” they were
ready to bring that time of healing to an end, and begin caring for
themselves and each other.  

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that this
timeline isn’t more aggressive?   I love, also that this happened at
Passover.  The first Passover was when the journey began, and it came
full circle, to the remembrance of that journey and to eating the
food in a new land as a new people, before the journey ended.

I don’t know where exactly the family trauma in the
parable starts, but I can see its fingerprints.  This is, sadly, not
a healthy family.  On the upside, it looks familiar enough to enough
of us that we can at least know that the Bible knows how REAL
families work.  We can see that God sees and knows families as they
are, and still works within them.  This family may or may not have
MAJOR trauma, but it is definitely struggling with at least a pile of
minor ones.

Before I delve into the parable, it seems worth taking
the time for a little reminder of what a parable is and is not,
because truthfully a lot of preachers get this wrong, and you may
have been misled along the way.  Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, New Testament
professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, has done amazing work with
her book “Short Stories by Jesus”  and my reflections are guided
by her.

Parables are stories, sometimes quite short, that resist
easy interpretation, and understandings.  Dr. Levine says, “What
makes the parables mysterious, or difficult, is that they challenge
us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own
lives.”1
Or, to be more direct: a parable is not an allegory.  Each character
doesn’t “stand in” for someone else, where it appears to be one
thing but is actually about God.  Or to be EVEN MORE DIRECT: please
don’t take the father in this story as God.  It won’t go well for
God, and it will deny us the chance to hear the story as it actually
is.

Luke is the only gospel writer to tell this story, and
it puts it after two other stories about things getting lost.  First
there are 100 sheep, and one gets lost.  The shepherd finds it and
rejoices.  Then there are 10 coins, and one gets lost.  The woman
finds it and rejoices.  So we’re well set up here.  A man has two
sons, one gets lost.

Hmmm, “There was a man who had two sons…”  That
should actually get our brains lighting up with memories.  Or, at
least, it would have for the first listeners.  “Two sons?  Oh yeah?
I’ve heard that one.  Cain and Able – older one was more than a
little bit of a problem, and God preferred the gift of younger.
Ishmael and Issac, older one had to be sent away entirely, younger
one got the blessings.  Esau and Jacob – yeah, OK, there is a
pattern here, I get it.  So, tell me about how the younger son is
better than the older and how God inverses my expectations, I’m
ready.”

Which means, of course, that Jesus inverses THAT
expectation.  This younger son isn’t a pillar of anything.  I believe
you know this part.  The younger son asks for his inheritance,
receives it, and an unexpectedly generous portion at that, sells it,
leaves, wastes it, there is a famine, and he gets hungry.  He then
realizes that he doesn’t have to live like that – he can go home.

Dr. Levine doesn’t entirely believe his contrition, and
she makes some good points about that.  While he claims to be going
home to just be a laborer, the word “father” keeps being
repeated, which actually keeps him in his position as son.  Also, the
line, “I have sinned against heaven and before you” is the exact
phrase Pharaoh mouths in order to stop the plague, which isn’t a
flattering repetition.  It has been said that his words could be
summarized as “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”2
 He has a rather good idea that this may be sufficient, this is a
father who already gave him his inheritance, already have him a
larger portion than he should have, and may well have offered him a
safe place to land if ever he needed it.  The father is a bit
indulgent.

The father is, of course, thrilled his son has come
home.  The son has been gone for quite some time, and has been
functionally dead to him, and possibly dead.  (I know you don’t need
this reminder, but they weren’t’ face-timing while he was away.)  The
father’s rejoicing mirrors the shepherd who found the sheep, and the
woman who found the coin.  YAY!  

This also fits human nature, right?  Most parents would
welcome home the wanderer, no matter where they’d been or what they’d
done.  That said, Dr. Levine concludes “I still have a picture of a
manipulative, pampered, and perhaps relieved kid at the fatted calf
buffet.”  

Which is important.  Because at this point the younger
son disappears from the story, and it becomes clear that this is the
SET UP for the real story.  The father thought he’d lost his younger
son, but in truth it looks like he’d lost them both.  The younger
came back, but the elder is still lost.  

No one told the elder brother about his brother’s return
nor the party.  

What the hey?

They didn’t notice he wasn’t there?  They didn’t think
to tell him?  This sounds – sadly- like a story I’ve heard from
lots of people.  The pain of being forgotten in their own family.
The so called “little” slights that add up over time to people
feeling like they don’t matter to the ones they love.  Furthermore,
based on all the other stories in the Bible with 2 sons, it is
reasonable to guess there were some issues between the brothers, and
the father’s rather extreme generosity to the younger one likely
didn’t help the relationship between them.

Now, the father does seem to suddenly get that there is
a larger family dynamic issue, and he does rush out to greet his
elder son.  Good!    However, as Dr. Levine says:

Years of resentment have finally boiled over and found
expression.  The son’s fidelity has been overlooked.  Once again the
problem child receives more attention, or more love, than the prudent
and faithful one.  By announcing that ‘there is more joy in heaven’
for the one who repents than for the ninety-nine who need no
repentance, Luke reinforces this preference.  We might think of the
older son as speaking for those ninety-nine who have no need of
repentance but who appear to bring less joy.3

Right, so this sounds like families I know.  It sounds
like my own family at times.  It sounds really familiar.  And I think
that’s part of the genius of the parable. This as come around to
dealing with responsibility and irresponsibility, enabling,
resentment, and the huge question: how to respond to it all?  This
sounds like life.  It is difficult and imperfect, and requires a lot
from us just to get through things – even the things that are
supposed to be good.  His brother is alive!  He came home!  And it is
COMPLICATED.


The father does well here.  The first word of his
response is best translated as an endearment “Child.”  Perhaps we
might hear it as “child of mine.”  The father acknowledges this
older son who has also been lost.  And the father acknowledges a
literal truth:  having given his property to his sons, all that he
had is now the property of his older son.   AND,  he needs to
rejoice.  He is a father who has had his son restored.

Now, this is where I think the parable is most
brilliant.  After the father’s speech it just… ends.  Does the
elder brother go into the party?  Would you?  

This family has all been lost to each other.  What will
it take to bring it back together?  Do they have the ability?  Do
they have the commitment and desire to fix things?  Will they?  

Would you?  Amen

1Amy-Jill
Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA:
HarperOne, 2014), page 3.

2Ibid,
Dr. Levine however is quoting David Buttrick ,54.

3Ibid,
64.

Uncategorized

“Mother Hen” based on  Psalm 118:1-6, 26-29  and Luke…

  • March 13, 2022
  • by Sara Baron
image

There are these contrasts in the Bible, these ways that
what is written is so shocking that we can’t even hear it most of the
time.  Human brains are mostly set on autopilot, and we conflate what
we hear with what we already believe to be true.  This can make it
hard to hear the Bible as it is, because we end up softening edges
that are actually quite hard!

Specifically, I think it could be easy to hear Jesus
say, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as
a hen gathers her brood under her wings” and think, “aw, that’s
sweet, Jesus loves me and wants to protect me.”  Which, I grant
you, is a part of the meaning.  But, it overlooks the radicalness of
that meaning.

Debie Thomas starts to explain it this way:

Here’s what I find so startling about the image. 
If maternal power, acumen, or success were the characteristics Jesus
wanted to emphasize in his choice of metaphor, he could have used any
number of more appropriate Old Testament images to make his point. 
God as enraged she-bear (Hosea 13:8).  God as soaring mother
eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11-12).  God as laboring woman (Isaiah
42:14).  God as mom of a healthy, happy toddler (Psalm 131:2). 
God as skilled midwife (Psalm 22:9-10).  But those are not the
images he chooses.  Instead, on this second Sunday in Lent,
Luke’s gospel invites us to contemplate Jesus as a mother hen whose
chicks don’t want her. Though she stands with her wings wide open,
offering welcome, belonging, and shelter, her children refuse to come
home to her.  Her wings — her arms — are empty. 
This, in other words, is a mother bereft.  A mother in
mourning.  A mother struggling with failure and futility.1

Whoa.

And, I think, since this is about Jerusalem which was
the Jewish center of power and influence (and lack of power and lack
of influence), and because Luke’s gospel was written AFTER the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, I don’t think we’re supposed to
miss the contrast between a mother hen reaching out empty wings and
wishing to protect her chicks with…the golden eagle that the Roman
Empire used as a symbol of its imperial power.

This is where we are dealing with God and Jesus upending
our expectations.  In a contrast between an eagle and a chicken, we’d
expect God to be the eagle, RIGHT?  (We do have that imagery in
Deuteronomy, as Debie mentioned.)  But, no.  Here we have a contrast
between a strong predator and a vulnerable prey, and we’re told that
Jesus is like the prey- and WORSE, like the prey trying with all her
might to protect her even more vulnerable young and failing to do so.

This sort of turns my stomach.  

I see in my head Ukrainian and Ethiopian mothers holding
their babies while bombs drop around them.  

But, that also clarifies the image for me.  If bombs are
dropping on mothers hovering over their babies to try to keep them
alive, and the choice is to see God in the bombs or in the mothers,
then the choice is easy – God is the one hovering trying to
protect, even when God can’t protect.

It still turns my stomach though.

And I can see why people might prefer to think of God in
the power of the bomb rather than the powerlessness of the mother.  I
think we’d expect the eagle, not the mother hen.  But, that’s not the
God we worship.

I don’t think it can be ignored that Luke is using this
passage to foreshadow Jesus’s death and resurrection.  The Jesus
seminar believes this whole passage to be a creation of Luke, a way
he was trying to make sense of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

The Pharisees are warning Jesus that if he doesn’t
change his ministry, he’ll get killed.  This is true.  But Jesus
responds that he isn’t done doing the work he needs to do.  They want
him to be afraid, and have that fear change his path.  Jesus seems to
understand, but he holds strong in the face of the fear.  He knows
his own vulnerability, he understands it, but he doesn’t let it
change his path.  A mother hen is vulnerable, but she still stretches
out her wings for the MORE vulnerable chicks.

The mother hen metaphor fits terrifyingly well with the
reality of Jesus’s impending death.  Debie Thomas writes, “Yes,
Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a fox.  But he never argues
that the fox isn’t dangerous. He never promises his children
immunity from harm.  I mean, let’s face it — if a determined
fox wants to kill a brood of downy chicks, he will find a way to do
so.  What Jesus the mother hen offers is not the absence of
danger, but the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly
vulnerable self in the face of all that threatens and scares us.”2

This, of course, suggests that the sort of strength God
offers, the sort of strength God asks for from us, isn’t the golden
eagle or bomb kind.  It is the vulnerable kind.

That’s the world-turned-upside-down-by-faith bit.  What
on earth is vulnerable strength?  (Except maybe everything?)  Isn’t
that just strength in weakness?  Yeah.  It probably is.  That’s the
God being unexpected thing.  Vulnerable strength is a mother hen,
with wings open, ready to protect any chick willing to huddle under
them, when even she herself may be swept away, but if she is, the
chicks may be able to live.  

To get good at vulnerability as strength though,
probably doesn’t require having to practice at the threat of life
level.  To be ready to do that sort of vulnerability requires
practice with the so-called easy stuff, to build up our vulnerability
muscles.  Vulnerability is saying, “I’m scared,” or “I’m sad,”
rather than putting on a mask of impenetrability and pushing through.
Vulnerability is saying, “I don’t know,” and taking the risk
someone might think we’re ill-informed, or “I can’t” when someone
might find you weak (or not trying hard enough.)  Vulnerability is
allowing ourselves to see other people’s pain without looking away or
running to a quick fix.  (This.  Is.  Hard.)

Vulnerability is staying with our own pain, rather than
pushing it away, or pushing it down, running to a quick fix, or
trying to push it off on someone else.  (#blame).

For many Christians, the “incarnation” is the
ultimate example of vulnerability.  The idea is that God who is GOD,
the creator of all that is, takes on human vulnerability, pain, and
mortality in the form of Jesus, and in doing so moves from
invulnerable to vulnerable to be with us.  

Truth be told, I have never resonated with that even
when theologians I otherwise adore say so.  A friend of mine, for
whom incarnation is one of the most important parts of his faith,
laughed at me once about that and said, “but aren’t you a
panentheist?”  (Translation: don’t you believe that God is
EVERYWHERE, in EVERYTHING, and all that is exists within the Divine?)
Well, yes, I am.  He said, so doesn’t that make the incarnation sort
of… redundant for you?

That was a helpful ah ha moment, because, for me it is.
(If you are a person who derives great meaning from incarnation,
please know that you are in the majority, and I’m the odd one out,
but I’m going to keep talking because sometimes others are also “odd
ones out” and like to know they aren’t alone.)

I believe God already has all the vulnerability in the
world – literally.  God is with ALL those who are struggling, in
EVERY way.  I believe in a vulnerable God.

Which is to say that I believe vulnerability is sacred.

And, because I try to practice it regularly, I believe
vulnerability is really, really hard work.  Especially when one is
trying to practice vulnerability for the sake of honesty and
connection, and modeling that none of us are impenetrable – but
trying to do that without causing undo   harm to others.  The balance
is not easy to find, and I am quite capable of having “vulnerability
hangovers” (a term I believe was coined by Brene Brown).  That is,
while I’m   pushing vulnerability today, but I’m acknowledging that
it can also be wielded as a tool in some cases, and that’s not what
we’re going for here.  We’re dealing with weakness and vulnerability,
not to use them as tools to manipulate others, or gain power over
others.

Rather, if God is vulnerable, then we are not excused
from our own vulnerability, nor asked to pretend it away.  I think
this is why Ash Wednesday starts Lent by asking us to remember that
we are mortal, so that we can remember to live our lives with
intention.  When we are vulnerable, we remember how tender we are,
how easily hurt, how close things that could harm us are, and we open
ourselves to those who are hurt, or harmed, or displaced, or
attacked.  And when our hearts break open to allow others in, we are
moved – once again – to create a world that is more just and
equitable so that the MOST vulnerable are no longer forced take the
pain the most powerful avoid.

That, I think, is the power of vulnerability: the power
to break our hearts open which moves us to create a better world.  

May God help us, all.

Amen

1Debie
Thomas, “I Have Longed” Lectionary Essay for March 13, 2022,
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3341-i-have-longed

2Ibid.

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

March 13, 2022

Uncategorized

“Testing Kinship Loyalty” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Luke…

  • March 6, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I’ve got to admit it.  I’m not
tempted by the things Jesus was “tempted” by in the dessert.  I
have never once wanted to change a rock into bread (perhaps because I
lack that skill???), I’m well aware that running kingdoms or even
democracies is incredibly difficult work that I don’t wish to partake
in, and I do not wish to test God by jumping off high places for no
reason.

Nope.  I do not resonate with
these.

There are not my temptations.

You want to know what my
temptations are?  These days I have serious temptations to stop
fighting – to just give up on the pandemic and stop trying to be
safe and stop trying to create safe places.  I want to do CRAZY
things like bring my kid to worship, or have dinner at a friend’s
house, or get a plane and meet one of my dear friend’s new babies.  I
want to just stop worrying.  I want to make people happy.  I want to
encourage people, “sure, do whatever you want in worship.  Take of
masks!  Stop distancing!  Sing!  Don’t worry about it!”  I’m
tempted to just give up.

AND

(and this is the really annoying
part)

I’m also tempted in exactly the
opposite way.  I live in constant fear that a choice I make will
result in my unvaccinated, too young to wear a mask kid getting COVID
and living with long covid for the rest of their life.  And so, I
want to create a bubble and never leave it.  I want to stay home,
stop day care, have groceries delivered, and function on zoom until
…. forever I guess.  

Actually, if I’m honest, more
than really being tempted by either extreme, I’m tempted by the idea
of not having to decide anymore.  “Is this safe?”  “Is this
safe ENOUGH?”  “Is this worth it?”  “If this results in my
kid having long covid, in 20 years will I think this was the right
choice?”  “Do I need to do this because someone else’s needs
outrank my own (or outrank my needs related to my kid)?”  “Is
this the right balance of caution and courage?”

I’m so tired.  It is so tempting
to move to one extreme or the other and just stop deciding.  It is so
tempting to move to one extreme or the other and only have one group
of people frustrated with me and my decisions.

The temptation is to just…
give up.  To pick an extreme and live with the consequences and at
the very least not have to decide OVER and OVER and OVER again.  

This likely isn’t even relevant
to most of you anymore.  Maybe you remember it, but those who are
vaccinated and immunocompetent, those of you who don’t live with
people who are either unvaccinated or immunocompromised, are possibly
just feeling free now.  Numbers are down, and lots of very reasonable
people are ready to go on with life, for good reason.  And for you,
it may even be that my temptations are a sort of unpleasant reminder
of your past, one that you’d rather forget.

I also know that I’m not alone.
There are plenty of families with kids under 5, or with
immunocompromised people, or even just people who work with kids or
immunocompromised people who still adjust their lives to protect
others – or just people who adjust their lives to protect others.
People make these choices because, in the end, they think it is
right.  

Of course, there are ALSO people
who have decided that the needs of connection, or the life-giving
work they do, or the risk they’ve assessed mean that letting go of
fear and seeking out other people is the right choice for them.  

Hmmm.

I guess what I’m saying is that
I’m tempted by simple answers, by choices I can make once and not go
back to, by CLARITY, but CERTAINTY.  I don’t need to be able to make
the choices for everyone or have them be the same, but my goodness
gracious I’d like some simple answers for ME.  I’d likely settle for
a single simple answer, if I could get one.

If you’ve been listening to me
preach for some time, you may be scratching your head at how I, one
of the people you know who is most comfortable thinking in shades of
gray could get to such a desire for certainty, for black and white
answers.  The answer is unfortunately simple:  the higher anxiety
goes, the more humans search for certainty and wish to back it up at
all costs.  So, what you are hearing is that I’m a human impacted by
anxiety.  Just to put it out there, so are you.  Welcome to the
2020s.

Bruce Malina and Richard
Rohrbaugh in “Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels”
point out that what Jesus is being tested on in the desert is his
loyalty to God.  Does he show faithfulness to God, as kin?  Does he
show faithfulness to God as his leader?  Does he show faithfulness to
God in understanding God’s wishes?  The answers, of course, are yes.

But I rather liked that they
referred to the question about commanding a stone to become bread as
a test of kinship loyalty to God.  They explain it this way:

Note carefully how the devil
frames the first challenge, “If you are the Son of God…”
Precisely that has been the claim and precisely that is what is being
tested.

Note also how carefully Jesus
answers when his lineage is questioned.  He does not
answer in his own words, as if his honor derives from what he is in
himself.  To do that would be to grasp honor above that of his own
Father and turn honor into dishonor.  So he answers as a loyal Middle
Eastern son would always answer – with something from his family
tradition.  He offers the words of his true Father in Deuteronomy and
by such laudable behavior he gains honor as virtue.1

A test of kinship loyalty to
God.  That does resonate.

Probably because all the angles
of what I’m tested by are variations on the theme of “a test of
kinship loyalty.”  What is my loyalty to my immediate family – my
child and others who are vulnerable?  How do I balance that with my
loyalty to my church family – which includes people who are
vulnerable in all sorts of ways including in needs to be together and
in needs to lower COVID risks.  How do I balance THAT with my
“kinship loyalty” to God?

And suddenly, with that framing,
at the very least, I can understand why I feel pulled in so many ways
and exhausted by the pressure of every decision.  Kinship loyalty
itself pulls me in a multitude of directions, and each direction has
its own set of reasons why it is right good, and most of the time
each direction has something pulling in exactly the opposite
direction that ALSO has reasons for being right and good.

But, at least I have a frame to
make sense of it!

And, if I want to simplify
things, I can admit to myself that for me, kinship loyalty to God is
not actually distinct from kinship loyalty to those I already care
for.  (With the possible exception that God would likely include ME
in my calculations, which I notably did not.)

So, the long and short of it is
that I FEEL the testing, I feel the wandering in the desert, I feel
the yearning for clarity, but, at least I know it all comes from
love?

And THAT gets me to the
absolutely fabulous Deuteronomy reading.  It is a favorite of mine.
Deuteronomy is set in the wilderness, but at the edge of it.  The
whole book presents itself as a series of speeches given to prepare
the people before they enter the Promised Land, so that when they get
there, they’ll do it right.

One of the themes of Deuteronomy
is that it is in the adversity and challenge of the desert that the
people learned to depend on God, and it is going to be more
challenging to remember their dependence on God when things are going
well.  As a person who feels like I’m wandering in the desert, I
think I respond along with those who listened the first time, “Yeah,
that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

The reading says that when they
get there, and they grow things, there is going to be an ABUNDANCE,
as that is what God wants for the people.  As they grow that
abundance, as they settle into a sense of food security, they’re to
remember their wanderings and give thanks for their abundance.  And
as that happens, they are to REMEMBER their story, they are to
REMEMBER their scarcity, they are to REMEMBER what it took to get
there.

Isn’t that interesting?  I think
in our culture we tend toward wanting to remember the glory days, not
the days of struggle.  We think about when we were strong and
capable, not when we were … struggling to find our way in the
desert.

But, the idea of this
commandment to tithe is to do so while recounting struggles, and to
give thanks for abundance by noticing what it took to get there.  AND
THEN taking of that abundance to share with those who don’t have it
(the landless priests and Levites and the foreigners without land
allotments.)

This whole thing just moves me.
That idea that we recognize our weak times, the idea that abundance
is God’s will for us (the culmination of the story), the reality that
the first thing to do with abundance is to share it, the creation of
a system whereby an abundance for some makes life possible for
others, and within all this that this is where our tradition of
offering comes from which is just so cool.

The culmination of the story is
abundance.  The people are being taught how to distribute God’s
abundance fairly.  They may be standing on the edge of the Promised
Land, but the goal is to get there and live there and have it be just
for everyone.

(And they did!  For centuries!
And it was equitable!  It is possible!  That matters too.)

So for me, right now, in my
place of being tested in the desert, I’m going to take hope from the
story about abundance, and the reminder that it is God’s long term
plan for me, for us, for all of us.

That doesn’t actually solve
anything in the present, but it is unsolvable.  However, having some
hope helps me get through.  Abundance is God’s plan for all of us.
God teaches us how to be generous with our abundance.  Kinship
loyalty to everyone is how we get there, and I guess… learning how
to balance a multiplicity of needs within the kinship network is.. a
useful skill?

Well, in any case, hear the
words the people were to say as they brought forward their offerings:

“A wandering Aramean was my
ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in
number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
When
the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard
labor on us,
we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the
LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our
oppression.
The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with
signs and wonders;
and God brought us into this place and gave us
this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
So now I bring the
first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”

or perhaps:

“I have emerged from a
confused and lost people.  In the midst of existent struggles with
justice and equity, came a pandemic that threatened everything and
everyone in many ways.  The challenges that might have united people
overcame them and separated them.  We became harsh to each other.  I
did not know what to do.  I was never certain of anything.

I cried to the Lord, as did
everyone else, and God heard our voices,

and offered us rest.

God guided us when we didn’t
know where to go.

God gifted us when we couldn’t
figure out which way to turn.

God was with us, when we were
numb.

God did that, and brought us to
a new world, and helped us form it into something better.

So now, I bring the first fruit
of hope, that you, O God have given me.”

May the day come when we can say
THAT as we bring forward our offerings.  Amen

1 p. 240-41
(Textual Notes: Luke 4:3)

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

March 6, 2022

Uncategorized

“A Vision, for Us Together” based on Isaiah 61:1-4…

  • January 30, 2022
  • by Sara Baron
image

Do you have a Bible verse you claim as your own, one that reminds you of who you are, who God is, and how you want to live. (Possibly three versions of the same question). I’m going to try to guess:

Maybe Micah 6:8:

[God] has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Maybe Amos 5:24,

“But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

The Golden Rule from Matthew 7:12?

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

The Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-5?

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

The great theology of 1 John 4:7-8?

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Maybe the simple repeated theme from Genesis 1:

“And God said it was good”

Or the Hebrew Bible theme of who God is

“God’s steadfast love endures forever"

Or the great equalizing in Christ from Galatians 3:28?

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Or maybe a more particular call from Isaiah 40:1?

“Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God.”

Or the wise challenge given Esther (4:14) that helps with courage?

“For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Or, perhaps, the deceptively simple instructions from Paul in Romans 12:7-8 (The Message)?

Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Or, just maybe, the Jesus theme from Mark (1:5)?

The time is fulfilled, and the kindom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

Did I get it? Let me know in comments or an email! If you didn’t have one before, there are some good options, and if you wanted to know more about how I see the Bible, you just learned a lot. I don’t have ONE passage, but all of the above are incorporated into how I try to live, how I understand God, how I understand the vision of the Divine and the work of being a follower of Jesus.

Given the depth and breadth of the Hebrew Bible, there are a LOT of options to choose from to pick a passage to define one’s life and/or ministry. And that’s why I think it is so interesting and notable to hear the one Luke uses to define Jesus. It is a Jubilee passage from third Isaiah, and – perhaps I don’t have quite enough hope, it wasn’t on the list I just shared. This one is BIGGER, broader, more radical, more extreme than any I’d claim for myself. For Jesus, though, it fits.

61The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

Walter Brueggemann makes a number of great points that help me make sense of this passage, and I’m going to share them with you, largely in my own words.1 It helps to remember that Isaiah 56-66 is considered “Third Isaiah”, distinct from what came before it in both themes and in timing. Isaiah 60 predicts a change for ancient Israel, a reversal of fortunes. It speaks to a people RETURNED from Exile, but struggling in the rebuilding stage. Brueggemann says these chapters are “primally concerned with the future of Jerusalem. It is urgent to determine if the new Jerusalem, which epitomizes new heaven and new earth, will or will not be a place of inclusion, will or will not be a place of neighbor ethic, will or will not manifest a passion for justice.”2

Isaiah 60 predicts that things are going to get better in Jerusalem, that God is going to make things better, and glory and prosperity are on the horizon. Isaiah 61 has a pretty big switch in that there is a HUMAN speaking, as God’s agent, one who is anointed with God’s spirit to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

This human is “authorized and energized to do Yahweh’s deeply transformative work in the community of Yahweh’s people.”3 And what the human-actor is going to do is create a NEW thing.

And the “new thing” is a creating justice for those who are weakened, disempowered, and marginalized. The verbs of what will happen to them speak volumes. The human acting on behalf of God will bring, bind up, proclaim, release, comfort, provide,

give. That is, a whole lot of action aimed at restoring “them to full function in a community of well-being and joy.”4

I know I’m going pretty deep into this passage, but when Luke claims this as Jesus’s vision for his ministry, and when it gives me the shivers like this to see how claiming this historical vision for Jesus fits both in his time and in ours, I think it is worth digging pretty deep.

Because, there are A LOT OF PEOPLE who are weakened, disempowered, and marginalized. And there is a lot of need for restoration, particularly restoring people to a good relationship within a healthy community of mutuality and JOY. Right? This speaks to the return of the exiles, and it speaks to the largely disempowered masses of Jesus’s day, and it speaks right into our day too. Our day, where corporate greed and epic income inequality along with racism and other forms of de-humanizing others prevent the fullness of God’s vision from being lived in people’s lives. A restoration to full function in a community of well-being and joy is another way of talking about God’s kindom, the one we’ve committed our lives to building, and it requires a lot of CHANGES.

Another important theme in this Isaiah passage is the concept of Jubilee. Jubilee is a Torah vision and commandment aimed at preventing generational poverty, and creating an equitable society. I’m currently reading David Graeber’s new book (with David Wendrow) “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” in which the professors examine many ways that human societies have organized themselves in order to consider why some societies carefully maintain equality and care for all, and why some create and maintain inequality and hierarchies of privilege.

It helped me see that the careful Torah provisions aimed at creating a just and equitable society were one of many ways of doing so, many of which have been successful for centuries. (Some archeologists see evidence that the lands of ancient Israel maintained a lack of hierarchy and care for all during the period of the Judges, some 300-400 years- which I think is a notable period of time!)

Pragmatically, practicing Jubilee is laid out in Leviticus 25 and relates to regular forgiveness of debts and restoration of land to original owners. Brueggemann says, “There is no doubt that a vision of jubilee -that is, a profound hope for the disadvantaged – is shockingly devastating to those who value and benefit from the status quo.”5 So, add in another element to what it means to have Jesus claiming this passage in his ministry. It names that he is upending the status quo for the sake of the disadvantaged. AND, it puts the advantaged on notice. There is a VERY good reason the Poor People’s Campaign is also claiming Jubilee as a platform, this Biblical concept still has power today.6 It is still NEEDED today.

I cannot resist the recommendation to reflect on Brueggemann’s quote “is shockingly devastating to those who value and benefit from the status quo.” We are, all of us, a complicated mix of powerful and powerless, we are those who benefit from the status quo and those who are held back by it. And it is of great value to our capacity to build the kindom if we are able to become clearer on where we benefit from the status quo, so we can change how we respond to those who are harmed by it. I suspect that this reflection is easiest accessed by attending to when our bodies “tighten up” at some suggestion for justice or another. What do we instinctually respond to as “that’s too far” OR “but, that would be scary (for me!)”? The work of building God’s kindom often requires us to pay attention to the clues from our bodies of what scares us, and then use that as a source of wisdom to listen to and empathize with people who lack whatever power we’re afraid of losing.

OK, a final point on Isaiah 61 (for now), The passage moves the community from sorrow and grief to gladness and praise. As the disempowered and marginalized are restored to full community, the community itself is healed.

So, when Luke tells us about Jesus reading a passage from Isaiah and claiming it as his own, there is A LOT going on there, a lot about God, a lot about the history of a people devoted to God, a lot about who Jesus is, and a lot about what God is asking of us.

Because, the gospels make it clear, the work that Jesus did during his life time is the work that the followers are Jesus are asked to continue in ours.

Which, rather uncomfortably suggests that I should have put Isaiah 61:1-4 on my list of verses to live by. Isn’t THAT a challenge?

Thank goodness we have each other and God: none of us are asked to be the single-human-actor. Instead, we TOGETHER have gifts sufficient for the tasks, and we TOGETHER have vision of justice, and we TOGETHER have power to build the kindom. We, TOGETHER, along with many other workers in the kindom, are given this time of upheaval in the world as a time to re-vision and to seek justice anew. May God help and encourage us along the way – there is a pretty long journey from where we are to where God dreams we will be. Amen

1 Walter Brueggeman, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998) 212-215.

2 Ibid, 167.

3 Ibid, 213.

4 Ibid 213.

5 Ibid, 214.

6 https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/about/jubilee-platform/

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 30, 2022

Uncategorized

Untitled

  • January 23, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

“To a People Called Hope” based on Isaiah 62:1-5 and John 2:1-11

To a generation that calls themselves Forsaken, to those who have lived years they call Desolate, to those who would name themselves Abandoned, to those living in a place they call Forlorn, to those who think of themselves as Discarded… (to a people in a pandemic?)…

It is to you that God speaks.

It is to you that God has been speaking.

You are not how you have known yourself. Your past is going to be behind you, and no one will call you by those names again (least of all yourself.)

You will be known for your inner radiance, for your joy and laughter, for the inspiration of your loving relationships, for the delight you bring, and the fullness of your lives.

God is taking care of you, and there is joy to come.

Take heart.

Take hope.

(Thus ends my interpretation of the Isaiah reading for us today.)

In the Hebrew Bible, one of the signs of the Messiah who was to come was an abundance of food and drink. That is, if the scriptures tell us there was A WHOLE LOT OF WINE, we would be wise to be thinking, “that’s a sign of God’s work among us.”

A CAVEAT: In The United Methodist Church, we use grape juice at communion as a means of care for those who live with an addiction to alcohol. This “first sign” of John’s seems to be a similar possible trigger. For those who are especially tender, let this serve as a content warning, and invite you to find another sermon to hear. For those who are feeling OK, but might need some space, I’d invite you to translate “wine” to “bread” as needed. GOOOOOD bread is a wonderful thing and the same connotations can be attached as to “good wine.”

Back to the main story: the Gospel of John, which tends to super-infuse meaning into the stories it tells, suggests that Jesus creates about 120 GALLONS of GOOD wine. That’s a lot of wine. It seems that this is being used as a fulfillment of those prophecies that with the messiah comes an abundance of good food and drink, and this abundance is being used to draw people in to notice who Jesus is.

I keep thinking that making wine was a good way to care for people’s practical needs (I’m told water usually wasn’t safe to drink), but making GOOD wine was a way to share in the joy and hope of God. The things that bring pleasure matter. Jesus wasn’t against enjoying life, and part of the Gospel narrative is telling us that we too, are allowed to enjoy our lives. This, too, I think is part of the messianic promise. What is the point of a messiah if the people don’t get to live GOOD lives?

On that basis, the good wine is a sign of God’s work among us, a sign of God’s care for the people, a sign that God is WITH the people, and they have reasons to have hope. Of course, the Jewish people in Galilee at the time of Jesus had been through about 8 centuries of difficult times and were pretty used to both hopelessness of circumstances and hope in God anyway.

Where do we put our hope, is, I think, a theological question. It tells us what we think is holy. We often put hope in institutions, which will dismay us because they care about themselves, not people. Other times we put our hope in each other, which can be quite lovely, as long as we keep people off pedestals, and allow each other the space to be human. But, of course, sometimes we put all of our hope in ONE person and that tends to be unstable. We’re encouraged to put our hope in the economy, or in the next great thing we will purchase, but those are clearly unstable. Often we’re taught to put our hope in education (I’ve been tempted to do this many times), and maybe there is SOME truth to that, but I think the student loan crisis provides enough reasons to have concerns there.

My hope is in God. Really and truly. I believe that God is with us, on our side, patient, able, and going to stick with us no matter what. I believe God is working towards the kindom in many people and in many places, and that God’s vision for the world is the most likely outcome over the long run.

And, I am aware that hope feels like a limited resource right now.

But, I think God plays a long game, so I’ll keep my hope there.

Where is hope right now? It isn’t in “going back” because that era has ended. But it also isn’t in staying the course, because this isn’t sustainable. (Note: the great resignation). But, perhaps there is hope in the fact that having been shaken up and taken off course, we have a chance to decide what course we want to take next.

The Isaiah passage uses the metaphor of marriage to indicate how significant the change of fate for the ancient Israelites will be. God is claiming the people, and their lives won’t be the same afterwards.

That, too, I think is true of our lives since the pandemic began. While there has been an obscene amount of death and destruction, and I don’t mean to minimize that, the upheaval has also made space for some hope. We have a chance to let go of the things that were holding us back from a fuller life. We have a chance to grab on to the things that move us towards a fuller life.

Or to say it another way, the wedding ran out of wine (boo) but somehow there is an abundance of Good Wine anyway, because God is with us. What do we want to do now?

I don’t have many answers, but I do have some medium term dreams for this church community. I hope that we will be able to gather, eventually without distance or masks, and we will be healed by being in each other’s presences. This week I was reminded of the power of “co-regulation” – when the physical and emotional processes of mammals join together to ease the struggles of both. Co-regulation means we can breath easier, keep our temperatures in the right range, AND let go of panic when we are near someone else we trust, who responds to us with warmth. Being a community that is trustworthy and warm, and that in doing so is able to help people in their human journeys sounds VERY hopeful to me. So, I hope we able to be together and co-regulate again, and I hope when do it is SLOW and SWEET and we notice how good it is.

I have a hope that someday we are going to have coffee hour again, with real coffee, and maybe some snacks, and mostly with people milling about chatting with each other and crying in relief to be together.

I have a hope that we might eventually create a regular practice of “listening groups” to do the holy work of hearing each other, and allow God’s healing to enter each other’s lives by being known and loved.

I have a hope that we might look for signs that we are growing as a faith community by seeing how compassion and empathy are growing within us.

I have a hope that we might judge ourselves, in part, by how much FUN we are having together, by how much delight is in our midst, by our contagious our joy is – that we may be signs of the goodness of God.

AND I have hope that some of things we’ve developed over the past almost two years will form us in the future: that we might keep intergenerational faith formation because it is GOOD, that we will always have an online presence because it connects us whenever we are apart, that we may always take seriously the needs of those who can’t be physically present.

So, dear ones, in your lives, in your work, in your play, and in your church I invite you to consider: what is the mediocre wine? What isn’t worth drinking, or doing, or fighting for? And, what’s the GOOD stuff? What makes life worth living, what brings wholeness and healing, what brings compassion or joy? Feel free to answer in the comments, or bring some answers to the Sunday Check in ;).

God is a God who can be trusted, and there is hope through God, and we might as well take stock of where hope is flowing through us. 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

January 23, 2022

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  • January 16, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

“Two Big Questions” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I’ve been told that human beings have two big questions in life, ones that are in tension with each other, ones that motivate much of what we do. They are: “Do I fit in?” “Am I special?” I think that together they add up to “Do I matter?” because both fitting in and being special are about mattering. We matter when we have a group who claims us, a place we can be real, an identity formed with others. We ALSO matter when we know we are making a contribution, that we are doing what WE in particular can do, when we are seen for being ourselves and not just another face in the crowd.

Or maybe when I was told this it was just about kids, as it came from a theory in my Children’s Literature class 😉 So, it seems, I’m the one who has expanded this to all humans. Mostly because it seems true to me.

We are always looking for clues about if we fit in, and adapting our behaviors to what we see around us. Think about masking at different kinds of gatherings and how uncomfortable it is to be in the minority in whatever decision you make.

We are also always looking for clues that we are special, and often we seek to show it by what we do, or say, or wear. This is part of why it can feel good to be thanked for sharing a musical gift, or visual display, or sharing a helpful thought. We want to stand out, in some ways, even as we want to fit in, in others.

So, they’re in tension, they motivate A LOT of what we do, and they add up to “do I matter?” Or maybe, “do I matter RIGHT?” Sometimes we even get stuck in old ways of fitting in or old ways of being special and struggle to adapt to new places or expectations. This stuff is deeply and profoundly correlated with IDENTITY, and for human-being-meaning-makers, our identity MATTERS.

I have been told that “Your community is the place that accepts your gifts.” Talk about intersecting the two questions! The place you fit in is the place that accepts you in your specialness. Hmmm.

Similarly, there are studies that say that we get a little burst of happiness hormones when we get a text message or a response on social media. These are ALSO related to our core questions: they tell us “I’m special enough someone is wanting to connect with me” AND “I fit in.” I find it interesting to pay attention to when I am doing things to get those little floods of positive hormones, and when I’m able to let go of them and be more present where I am.

For me, the story of Jesus’s baptism, and the ways it resonates in our lives today, correlate with all of this: being accepted and fitting in, being special and unique, and being affirmed as mattering. God saying, “You are my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” is the crux of what most of us need to hear most of the time, and a statement we struggle to believe and thus push back against.

We worry we aren’t worthy. That something we said, or did, or didn’t say, or didn’t do makes us unlovable. We worry that we aren’t sufficiently pleasing God, that we aren’t good enough, or we aren’t doing enough. This may be why we constantly seek affirmation that we are special and we do fit in. We need it, but we don’t trust it from the Source.

In the United Methodist Church we rather firmly hold that baptism is a one-time deal. Our reasons are sound: because baptism is a gift from God, humans can’t mess it up, so it doesn’t ever NEED to be redone. That “can’t be messed up” applies both to the person who does the baptizing – it doesn’t matter if they’re imperfect because God is the actor, not the pastor AND it applies to the baptized – it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, you can’t shake off God’s love. (It seems worth admitting that I believe in ONE exception to the “baptized once” rule, which is that if someone is baptized with a name and gender that do not match who the person has come to know themselves to be, then I am willing to make sure that they receive the blessing of inclusion with their actual name and actual gender. God still hasn’t messed up, but any ritual of inclusion should include the ACTUAL person.)

Of the many explanations for what baptism is, the one I most resonate with is that it is a ritual of inclusion. When someone is baptized we welcome them into the Family of Faith. Now, OF COURSE, we believe that God’s love is for all people and God works for the good of all people. So, the difference is that we, as the Family of Faith, acknowledge that love and spend our lives seeking to expand its impact in the world. We commit to work together to expand that love, to be loving to each other, to encourage each other in the work, and to recognize the sacredness of each person both within the Family of Faith and beyond it. To be baptized as a baby is to have promises made to teach you these things, to be confirmed or to be baptized as an adult is to claim this God of Love for yourself and the aim of expanding love in the world as your shared goal. (We often call this “the kindom”, MLK talked of the Family of Faith as being the “beloved community.”)

When Jesus was baptized by John, he was committing himself to John as his teacher, and becoming a “disciple” of John’s. He, too, was joining a movement committed to a Godly way of life and a vision for how the future should be. Later on, after John died, he claimed his own vision (similar to but similar to John’s) and started doing his own baptisms, claiming his own disciples. As disciples are learners, one of the phrases still used for people of faith in the Christian (Jesus following) tradition is “disciples.” In this church we seek to learn so we can understand both the world as it is and God’s vision for a just future for all of creation.

Baptism incorporated Jesus into his chosen community, and then incorporated his disciples into theirs, and incorporates us into ours. We are, at least we seek to be, that place that receives the gifts that people are willing and able to offer. This is a place where we “fit in” and try our hardest to make it possible for others to do so well. AND, that means it is also a place where we get to be special – to offer particular skills and gifts for the wellbeing of the whole.

There are so many loud and constant narratives in the world at large telling us that we aren’t enough, that some people matter more than others, that injustice is unavoidable, that fear should motivate us (to buy things), and that we should work harder to protect ourselves – no matter the cost to others.

And then there are the narratives of God. God says to the people (Isaiah 43):

Dear Ones, I created you, I formed you, and I like you.

You can let go of fear, you are already enough,

You can let go of worry, you are mine and that is identity enough.

You are beloved children of God. And it is good.

When you face floods, I am with you.

When you face droughts, I am with you.

You are precious to me.

I love you.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.

Come home to me.

I created you for goodness,

and I call you by your name.

NOW, integrity requires me to point out that this song of Isaiah is COMMUNAL, it was written to the nation of ancient Israel, promising that the Exile wouldn’t have the last word. The you is the whole, not the individual. And, I would say, that sometimes we need to hear it as it was written and be reminded of the power and sacredness of the whole. AND sometime we need to hear it as individuals and be reminded that we too are special to God.

The Spirit guides our reading and hearing of holy texts.

Dear ones, in God’s house, you fit in. AND, in God’s eyes you are special. When humans create God-centered spaces, they’re able to offer a genuine welcome God’s uniquely wonderful beings. And we try to do that, together.

May you rest assured, beloved child of God, you are already enough, and you need not struggle to matter. You already do – you are God’s beloved, and that IS enough. 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

January 16, 2022

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  • January 9, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little shift inside can have HUGE consequences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is scary.

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

And it exhausting.

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

And it is horrible.

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

There are “other roads home.”

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

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

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

2Apple Dictionary 1/6/2022.

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  • December 26, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“The Narrow Way” based on Psalm 148 and Luke 2:41-52

Jesus was a pretty radical figure, maybe. I can’t always tell. On the one hand he messed with some really basic parts of religious norms of his day – like Sabbath keeping, and marriage laws, and the sanctity of the temple, and tithing. But on the other hand, all of what he taught can be found within the Jewish religious tradition of his day. He is a prophet calling people back to fidelity to God’s vision for a society who takes care of all people – just one doing it in the context of his own day.

As I try to figure out if Jesus was a radical or not, it becomes clear that the actual crux of it all is that following our God is a radical act, and that’s true throughout our tradition as well as in our lives. I read the Bible with a bias towards the narrative about Sabbath and distributive justice. (John Dominic Crossan suggests there are two major themes. That’s one, and a covenant / reward / punishment theme is the other. They’re interspersed in the Bible, but have very different worldviews.)

To seek to follow God’s ways, which are about distributive justice, adequate rest for all, and seeing the Divine Spark in every ONE and all of creation. And, it is a radical act to do so from within “domination systems” that prioritize some lives over the lives of others, and take the work of the many to enrich the few. I’m sometimes more than a little distressed to notice that the difference between Jesus’s time and ours is that he lived in a “pre-industrial agricultural domination system”1and we live in a post-industrial non-agricultural domination system. Both systems are maintained by violence and the threat of violence, exploit the poor for the sake of the very few on top, silence the many, and use religion to legitimize the exploitation.

So, in the face of the domination systems, God’s kindom of equitable distribution of rest, of labor, of food, of clothing, of shelter, of healthcare, and of education is RADICAL in the extreme. Anyway, I’m thinking about all of this because we have in our Gospel Lesson today a presentation of Jesus at age twelve being more than a little bit of a smarty-pants, but also showing that he UNDERSTOOD the point of following God. The story says he amazed the religious teachers of the day, and claimed the center of the faith tradition as his place in the world. This is, of course, a story told by later generations who were seeking to make sense of the wisdom of Jesus, but as a story overloaded with metaphor and meaning, it is definitely worth further examination.

The piece that often strikes me in this story is that it affirms once again how religiously faithful Jesus’s parents were. The travel to Jerusalem from Nazareth wasn’t minor, and doing it every year constituted a real burden. But those who were thinking about how Jesus came to be Jesus really believed that he had to emerge from a family deeply established in God-worship and God-living. Luke’s story does this in so many ways, and I tend to agree. The ways that Jesus spoke and reflected on the scripture of his own tradition, the faithfulness to the Holy One that he lived, and the teachings he offered could only come from someone who grew up steeped in faithful Judaism, AND in the difference between God’s vision and the world’s domination systems.

This year, perhaps because the First Sunday of Christmas is the day after Christmas, and the stories are all smooshed together in my head, I’m struck that this story about Jesus as a young wisdom teacher in the Jewish tradition comes very soon after Luke’s story of his mother at a similar age singing the Magnificat, and showing the depth of HER understanding of God’s radical ways. These 12 year olds are both said to know the faithful wisdom of the ages, and I think that’s intentional, because how could Jesus become Jesus unless his mother was as faithful and wise as she is presented as being.

We also have the repetition in this story that Mary, “treasured all these things in her heart.” (2:51a) which we also heard in verse 19, after the shepherds told their story, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I’ve recently been reminded to look more holistically at Mary’s story. She agrees to bear the Messiah, even when it risks her life. Or, perhaps, she survives sexual violence, and gets pregnant, and then has to find a way forward with her son. And then, it seems, she has to figure out how to feed him, and how to keep him alive, and how to teach him about oppression while teaching him about nonviolence, and how to trust God. And, then in the end, she is said to watch him die. Mary’s life is incredibly faithful, but almost never easy, it seems. Her wisdom, her faith, her trust in God define her life, and become the background of the teachings of Jesus, but they don’t protect her from harm.

That’s true of Jesus too, but sometimes it seems like maybe he had more choice in the matter. He remained faithful to God and God’s teaching even when it was clear it would result in his death by the hands of the Empire. He could have stopped, right? I don’t know. But I think maybe his mother’s child couldn’t stop as long as anyone lived under oppression.

From where I sit, it isn’t always clear what decisions are following in the ways of God’s vision / Mary’s faith / Jesus’s life and what decisions are following in the ways of the domination system. It would be so nice if it were always clear, but life is muddy. Maybe that’s why the adult Jesus taught in parables. The answers aren’t in black and white, they’re in the struggle to find the meaning of the story in the context of the day and in the context of our day. The systems change, but God’s vision remains. And those who are faithful to it still seek wisdom to live the kindom and bring it further into being. The two systems are hard to disentangle rather on purpose – it benefits the domination system to look “righteous” and it tries hard to look like God’s way.

I think this is why following God’s way is sometimes called the “narrow way” – it is less traveled, and harder to find. Sometimes we get lost trying to find it. And yet, I deeply believe, worth seeking and walking or rolling on it. I think it is even worth the times we are lost.

In this Christmas season, may we commit again to following in God’s radical ways, to traveling the narrow path, and to seeking them with our lives. Amen

1 Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 26, 2021

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  • December 12, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Soft Eyes and Third Ways” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18

As a matter of faith, whenever it is possible, I believe in refusing the binary and looking for a third way. I believe God is creative, I believe in win-wins, and I believe more goodness is possible than I can anticipate.

You, in this church, have affirmed this belief for me time, and time again. You have found third ways, you have shown me third ways, you have stayed with each other long enough to see past seeming binaries and found the shared values underneath. I believed this when I came here, intellectually, but I believe it in my body and soul now.

A few years ago, at a retreat, we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” It looked and sounded ridiculous. We were broken into sets of three, and one at a time each of us was asked to stand tall while the other two pulled as hard as they could on the arms of the person standing. However, each of us did this three different ways. First, we fought as hard as we could against the pressure. It was overwhelming. Then we just, let go, and let the pressure take us down. It was demoralizing. But, finally, we let the pressure come without fighting it. And, all of a sudden, the pressure felt like a good stretch. It was possible to withstand the pulling, and stand tall, indefinitely.

We then compared that to staring at something as hard as we could, to glancing and looking away, and to looking, but letting our eyes soften and see “through” what we looked at. This is third way stuff. This is refusing “all or nothing” thinking, and engaging in “both/and” thinking.

This is important, more now than ever. We have learned that our society has been under attack for quite some time by foreign countries that want to destabilize us by fanning the flames of cultural difference. We have also learned that social media sites, our email providers, our phones, and our web browsers are tracking our every move to try to understand us and our perspectives in order to make money off of us. And, they’ve discovered, telling us things that make us angry, and creating “us versus them” thinking (binaries!) is really great for business.

There is significant but mostly invisible pressure on us to enter into binaries and disregard the humanity of people on the other side. But, our faith teaches us that our shared humanity, the sacredness of every person that derives directly from God, is definitional. We seek to connect, not to disconnect. We seek to understand, not to dismiss. We seek to love, not to hate.

This is counter-cultural work, and it is emotionally challenging work. It is hard to be creative and find the third way, and it is nearly impossible when we’re riddled with anxiety or anger. It is hard to slow down and figure out what’s really going on, so a new solution might emerge, when everything feels urgent. And, too, it is hard to care when so much of what is live-giving and wonderful about life isn’t available right now.

As I hear Luke telling us about the preaching of John the Baptist though, I’m struck that in his shocking ways, he calls us to exactly this sort of work. John calls the ones who have come to hear him “a brood of vipers” which was super insulting, and not how polite people spoke to each other. I notice that it is a violent image. Vipers are a danger to life.

I also notice that John the Baptist calls out three groups of people, and they’re surprising. First he calls out anyone wealthy enough to have more than enough. Two coats, more food than they need. That feels like a pretty low standard of wealth, but since many people in that day (and ours) weren’t sufficiently clothed and even more didn’t have enough nourishment, anyone with too much was seen as hoarding what others needed. Then he calls out tax collectors and soldiers, and that feels REALLY weird to me. Of course, Jesus will do some work with a tax collector too, but both tax collectors and soldiers – in an occupied state – were part of the system of oppression that kept the poor in poverty and used their labor to enrich the already rich.

And John the Baptist doesn’t tell any of these people that they have to quit their jobs or change everything about their lives. He JUST tells them that they need to stop hurting other people. Take the two cloaks, give one way. Take the extra food, give it away. Don’t take more tax money than what you have to, even if you are allowed to. And, don’t extort people or act out violently against them. Take what you have and let it be enough, even if other people have more.

That is… refuse to participate in oppression, which in essence is refusing to participate in violence because violence takes a lot of forms and one of them is keeping food from those who need it to live.

This theme unites John the Baptist and the one he would baptize, Jesus. They created movements of people who refused to participate in violence. Their words and actions echo through the ages, asking us to do the same.

What does non- violence look like? Well, it is seemingly simple and difficult enough to engage us for our whole lives – like faith. For some it takes on pacifism, a big one. But it also is in the little every day things. It looks like intentionality with words we use and don’t use. It is in how we treat those in our households, and those in our inner circles, and those in our church family. It over looks like speaking in “I-statements” and taking responsibility for our emotions, and thinking more than once before we pass along information that we don’t know to be true. And, it means not kicking people when they’re down – OR UP. It means paying attention to our buying habits and how people were treated when they made the things we buy. It means paying attention to investments if we’re lucky enough to have them, and considering which companies are engaged in violence. Perhaps most challengingly, it also means treating ourselves without violence, including in the ways we speak to ourselves inside ourselves!

AND it means disengaging from binaries, and finding deeper truths about people, groups, and ways forward.

One big piece of refusing to participate in violence is engaging in compassion. Letting compassion take a bigger and bigger space in our lives. Learning how to be compassionate to ourselves and then letting that extend to others and then letting that expand even further.

And I’m here to tell you that this is really, really hard, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. My heart is more tender than it used to be, and the brokenness everywhere hurts me more than it used to, and it constantly threatens to overwhelm me.

But that same exercise on “soft eyes” and letting pulling turn into stretching was fundamentally about standing in the “tragic gap” between what IS and what SHOULD be, and letting it break us open without letting it break us. Because there are (at least) three ways to respond to the suffering around us. We can ignore it and push it away because it is too hard, but that doesn’t change anything. We can let it in and let it break us, but that actually doesn’t change anything either except that there is a little more brokenness. OR, we can let the brokenness break us open, and be present to it without drowning in it.

This is what we aim for, and we’ll fail both ways much of the time. But, on this third Sunday of Advent, I want to be sure to remind all of us about what can keep us upright in the Tragic Gap, and how we can be with brokenness without breaking, and let compassion hurt but not drown us.

There are two keys to this: God, and joy. They’re related. (Pretty deeply.) Finding spiritual practices that get you centered are imperative to life-long kindom building. They keep us upright. They keep us compassionate. They also tell us when it is time to take breaks. AND they keep reminding us that there is ALSO joy.

We live in a broken AND beautiful world. There is violence AND wonder.

An article I read in The Atlantic this week suggested thinking of things you used to do just because you liked them, and figuring out what you liked about them, in order to find what you might like doing now. This was intended to apply to those of us who have forgotten how to play and have fun.1

Let joy in. Play! Laugh! Have fun! Giggle if you possibly can. Fill yourself up. It is good in and of itself to enjoy life, AND it is NECESSARY to have joy in order to be able to do the work to build the kindom, a place of profound joy. We can’t build it if we don’t know it, we need to have joy to make space for joy. So dear ones seek God and joy… they matter on their own and they help us be compassionate and nonviolent. Thanks be to God for joy! Amen

1https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/how-care-less-about-work/620902/

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 12, 202

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  • First United Methodist Church
  • 603 State Street
  • Schenectady, NY 12305
  • phone: 518-374-4403
  • alt: 518-374-4404
  • email: fumcschenectady@yahoo.com
  • facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady
  • bluesky: @fumcschenectady.bluesky.social
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