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June 6, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Only Love Can Do That” based on Psalm 130 and Mark 3:20-35

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nurturing love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,ngdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand,” were rephrased by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King into, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.“

In the Gospel, Jesus is experiencing attack. He was a healer, and a successful one. This disconcerted some people. Isn’t that the way things go sometimes? Someone is doing their thing, their uniquely gifted by God to take care of each other thing, and somehow or another people get upset about it. Maybe Jesus was undermining the revenue streams for other healers. Maybe he was getting a little too famous a little too fast. Maybe the way he went about it decreased dependence on the official religious mechanisms. Maybe he was supposed to be “nobody” and it upset things far too much for him to turn out to be “somebody.”

But somehow or another, this attack on Jesus feels… normal. He was doing a good thing that helped people and others took offense. Welcome to life itself, right?

In this case, the ones who went on the offensive against Jesus didn’t have much to work with. After all, how offensive is it really to heal people and not ask for payment? So they SAID that the reason he had the power to heal was because he was evil. Or, in their language, he was given the power over demons by the head demon.

Now, Jesus tends to be pretty patient with people who are struggling, or downtrodden, or under attack. But, according to the gospels he usually wasn’t above defending himself with quick wit. Mark says that Jesus replied, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” AKA, if evil were being used to drive out evil, it would work against the power of evil.

Or, again, in the way that speaks far better to me, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”1

While I was pondering all of this, in the midst our Wednesday night study “Caring for Inactive Members” Rev. Bob Long shared his understanding of the difference between anger and hate. (Note that is what I remembered him saying, so please assume any faults are mine, not his.) Anger is a sign of caring, a sign that something one values is being violated, and that the person experiencing anger cares enough to want to change what’s wrong and maintain the relationship. On the other hand, hate is a desire to no longer be in relationship with the other, and does not involve caring.

PLEASE NOTE: While I really appreciate this, and all ways of humanizing the experience of having emotions, and any reminder that anger can be fruitful in bringing justice and resolutions, I am also sorely aware that anger can also be used as an excuse for harm, punishment, and abuse. ANGER is a part of life, one that can useful as a way of noticing what we value and guiding us towards actions that fit out values. Anger is not, however, excuse for violence in words or actions. There is a fundamental difference between being angry and taking anger out on others. The former is normal and good. The latter is not.

In this moment in time, we live in the midst of deep and deepening divisions. We’re told that some of the divisions in society are intentionally created by outside nations, seeking to lessen the power of the United States in the world. Others are flames intentionally fanned for the sake of political power. Still others have been used to break apart the mainline denominations, so that our voice in calling for justice and the building of the kindom would be lessened.

And NOW we’ve added to all of this various ways of responding to a global pandemic, questions about masking, vaccinating, social distancing, opening and closing of various businesses, and schools, and places of worship.

There are deep and deepening divisions. Many of them move people to anger. Anger fits, positions on issues of life and death are deeply held. I fear, however, that some are moving people from anger to hate.

Further, I fear that with each and every deepening division, we get better at division and less skilled at connection. I fear we’re getting better at hate, when we’re called to get better at love. To quote MLK again, “Psychologists and psychiatrists are telling us today that the more we hate, the more we develop guilt feelings and we begin to subconsciously repress or consciously suppress certain emotions, and they all stack up in our subconscious selves and make for tragic, neurotic responses.”2

I also fear we’re letting the energy of division come home to roost. The way the outside world works in soundbites, and us vs. them, and gossip, and triangulation, and fear mongering and a refusal to engage in direct communication… all these pieces of division are getting NORMALIZED. So are attacks, like the ones against Jesus that started this whole story in the Gospel.

So, let’s take a few moments to remember again what being a part of the Jesus-movement, kindom building, God-centered, beloved community is all about. It is far easier to focus on what we’re meant to be when we remember what that is.

In the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus says “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

He expands his family. He refuses the boundaries that tell him who he is to love, protect, and care for, and he simply embraces more people in that role. He expands the kindom, his own kindom, to include those working with him in expanding God’s love in the world.

To expand kinship is to expand who is “us” …eventually until there is no “them.” To expand kinship is to have enough trust and respect for other kin to discuss disagreement, disappointments, hurts, and fears directly. To expand kinship is to listen, even to long-winded, indirect stories that may or may not eventually come around to the topic at hand (but … I mean… maybe not DURING a meeting?? ) To expand kinship is to disagree and not let that disrupt relationship. I hope that you’ve seen this in your life, family members who like each other immensely and have enough space in that liking and loving for real differences.

It is my hope that some of what we do in worship is expand kinship. Worship is seeking to connect to the Divine together. Over the past 1 ¼ years, the “together” has taken on new meaning, and has proven to us that there are a lot of different ways to be together. Worship itself is quitea wide range of things. Silence, and word, and music – sometimes a particular worship has only of those forms! Prayer, scripture, and reflection – again, sometimes one is dominant over others. The forms of prayers vary. The types of music vary. The length of service varies!!! The structure and form of the service, and even of the reflections can also vary greatly. I’m reminded that there are a significant number of people in our midst for whom the more profound form of worship is service, and others for whom the Divine is most reachable in nature.

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nuruting love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in [God’s] word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm130:5-6)

Worship make space for that connection. It is time set apart to connect. May worship bring us closer to love, to God, and to each other. May worship even help us gain the strength and courage to keep on connecting with each other across differences. Or to put it another way, maybe worship can function a way to prevent anger from becoming hate. Or maybe it is even more powerful than that. Maybe worship is able to nurture love in us, and love is the thing most powerfully able to drive out hate. May it be so. Amen

1Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 – originally 1963), 47

2 Martin Luther King “Loving Your Enemies” sermon Nov. 17,1957, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Found at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church (He’d edited by the time it was published in Strength to Love.)

June 6, 2021

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May 30, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Come, Holy Spirit”

In Easter evening the disciples were locked up together in a house, afraid of what would happen to them. It was into that enclave that stories of resurrection started to be told. And, it was in that enclave that some experiences of resurrection happened. According to Acts, the disciples were mostly together in that room for a rather extended period of time, praying, and …. just a little bit… starting to organize. As time went on, there were more people gathering together, functioning together as an extended family, but still they were gathered together in a tight circle, in Jerusalem.

And then came Pentecost.

Pentecost was and is a Jewish festival celebrating the first fruits of the wheat harvest. Faithful Jews had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, just as faithful Jews had gathered for Passover, 50 days earlier. It was another of the 3 festivals that was a traditional pilgrimage feast.

A colleague of mine suggested that the first Christian Pentecost story, the one we read in Acts, required those days apart from the world.

Of course, at this point, we may scoff at 50 days. 😉 To the scoffers, I’ll offer a reminder of the 40 years of wandering in the desert, which the Bible also said was necessary to “get the people ready.”

As you may know, I do not believe in a God who punishes. I do, however, believe in a God who is willing to use any situation as a jumping off point for good. ANY situation. Those ideas can get confusing sometimes for people, because talking about what God does with a situation can SOUND like “God created this situation for good” but I don’t mean that! I just really believe that God is willing and able to enter any situation and seek the best possible outcome from that point, and often God is far more creative than we’d be able to imagine!

In Acts, 50 days after Easter, The Holy Spirit showed up, with gusto. God’s Spirit is a part of the understanding of the Divine in the Hebrew Bible as well, but the way the Spirit shows up is new. To be fair, the symbol of fire as representing God’s presence isn’t new, the burning bush helps us out there. And “tongues of fire” is a phrase that comes from Isaiah 5. The wind a symbol of the Spirit isn’t new either. But added up, it IS new.

God’s Spirit shows up, sounding like a rushing wind, looking like divided tongues of fire, and imparting the gift of being understandable to people of many nations, languages, and cultures. Robert Wall in the New Interpreter’s Bible says, “God’s spirit is poured out upon a community of believers. The Holy Spirit is not a ‘personal’ gift from God that each believer privatizes – ‘you can have your Spirit if I can have mine.’ This same Spirit of one God ‘appeared among them – on each of them’ as the distinguishing mark of a people belonging to God. The restoration of Israel is the work of this Spirit sent by God as promised (see 1:6) which is why the first auditors of the miracle of tongues were ‘devout Jews from every nation’ (2:5).”1

I must admit that this year I was particularly astonished by the list of the places the devout Jews were from. It served as a profound reminder of the history of the diaspora, of the people of Jewish faith being displaced, which is especially notable when Judaism has an especially strong theology as being people of the (promised) land.

This fits the history of the Jewish people, of course. They settled on land that was a crossroads between civilizations, and as Empires expanded they expanded to include the crossroads. As Empires contracted, other Empires expanded, and a long, difficult history of independence, tributes, colonization, and external control ALREADY characterized their history by the time of Jesus. Wars had come and gone. Empires had come and gone. And each time, people had come and gone, dispersing the “people of the land” to many lands.

It fits, as well, that dispersed people of the land would have a tradition of pilgrimage to come back home to the land.

These themes of place feel so strong in this story this year. The followers of Jesus being so afraid that their world contracted to a single room, or perhaps a home. The devout Jews being so broadly scattered and making such profound efforts to come “home” to worship. The ways that distance separated them even when they were in Jerusalem, by dress, and culture, and LANGUAGE.

The idea of a miracle of understanding. Of course, it makes sense to think about Christian Pentecost as being the antithesis of the Story of the Tower of Babel. In the Tower of Babel story, God was afraid the people had too much power together and seprated them with language. In the Pentecost Story, God’s Spirit blesses the people with connection and the capacity to speak and be understood. It could be said that God has gained trust in the people (and then it becomes a question of if we’ve earned it or God just gave it because God’s like that.)

Sometimes I yearn for the miracles of Pentecost, most often when I am speaking with someone whose language I share, but with whom I’m clearly not managing to communicate. The barriers of assumptions, connotations, life experience, expectations, values, and fears can make “shared language” distinctly insufficient for shared communication.

Yet, we are the inheritors of the Pentecost story. As one person put it, in Christmas we get the story of “God with us.” At Easter we learn that “God is for us.” At Pentecost we tell the story that God is IN us. The Spirit residing in and among us makes it possible for us to do God’s work in the world, to share love, to build the kindom – and sometimes even to understand and be understood.

While the pandemic continues around the world, and right here at home, in the United States many people are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are making it possible to for life to change again. It may make sense to think of us as emerging from an overly small room. (Acknowledging, of course, the many who cared for us so well that they never were able to protect themselves. I hope for front line workers there is an emerging from fear.)

I believe that God is up to good among us, now, as God was up to good among the disciples then. I’m not arrogant enough to claim I know what God is up to, but I can sense…. something. This sermon is the last one I’ll preach exclusively online, at least for a while and perhaps for always. While we will keep online worship, we will also offer an informal outdoor worship service starting next week. Like the disciples, we’ll be in the city, able to be heard by those walking by. Maybe, God’s Spirit will make us audible in a new way as we emerge. But whatever God is up to, I know it is good. Amen

1Robert W. Wall “Refections on Acts 2:1-13” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol X, ed. Leader E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), p. 57.

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May 2, 2021
by Sara Baron

“On Being Pruned” based on 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8

While I was in college I lead a group of new freshman on an outdoor adventure trip. We were assigned to trail maintenance in a very remote part of Northern New Hampshire. It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip, but it turns out that a lot of trail maintance is actually killing small trees so that they don’t grown on the trail and I really deeply hated that. No matter how many times I reminded myself that by maintaining the trail and giving people a chance to experience that pristine wilderness I was PROTECTING most of the trees, I still felt uncomfortable with each one I killed.

Similarly, I’m not particularly good at pruning. I’m so afraid of going too far that I don’t go far enough. It would be enjoyable to claim that this is related to the value, “don’t hurt living things unless you have to” but that fails to notice that things you prune are things that NEED pruning. Pruning is a source of abundant life.

According to Gospel commentaries, grapevines are things that need pruning. The Five Gospels says, “Vines do not have branches, contrary to popular usage, but ‘canes.’ Each year canes are snipped from the vines and piled in the vineyard to be burned. … The vines will not bear good fruit, or fruit in abundance, if they are not pruned annually.”1 The metaphor loving writer of the Gospel of John suggests this is true of the followers of the way of Jesus as well. We too need regular pruning to “bear fruit.”

I suspect many of us feel similarly about pruning ourselves as I do about pruning any other living thing. It is uncomfortable, it is done with caution, we don’t want to go to far. And that means that often we don’t prune quite far enough.

This may feel like an unfortunate time to come across this Gospel, because the impact of the pandemic has been a desire to return to “normal” and profound objections to the ways our lives have been “pruned” from the outside beyond our control. But here is the Gospel anyway, and when we’re honest we note that even this awful pruning has had SOME silver linings.

Now, in John’s metaphor, God is the gardener, and God is the one doing the pruning. We are fairly passive to the pruning. We are definitely NOT in charge of self-pruning. 🙂 Phew. Likewise, we are not in charge of fruit production. Fruit comes from being connected to Jesus, and well pruned by God, and we are mostly PASSIVE fruit bearers. Fruit or lack there of isn’t really our fault. We are tended, rooted, and pruned to be the best fruit bearers we can be, and we can simply BE and God’s goodness will work through us.

Nice.

While I think that idea is incomplete, I also think it is one worthy of consideration.

Many of us TRY REALLY HARD ALL THE TIME, and this suggests that we can let go and God’s goodness will keep flowing. That is an important truth, if incomplete.

So if God is the gardener and the pruner, then who are we when we resist pruning? I suspect that we are vine “canes” that are holding on for dear life to canes that have already been snipped and berating ourselves that we can’t bring them back to life. There are these dead, decaying branches and we’re holding them in place willing them to grow again, and in doing so, missing the new life springing up within us.

Several years ago I watched a TED talk by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard entitled “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” Gilbert’s ideas have stayed with me ever since. He opens his talk by saying:

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

I’m hoping you already see how this relates to letting God’s pruning without fighting it! He states his thesis directly (don’t you love that?), “What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. “ As you might hope, Gilbert proves this point along the way, and then goes on to conclude:

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen. …when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It’s as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed on the timeline. It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. 2

That is, pruning happens whether we want it to or not, and either we can make peace with it and let it be, or we can fight with it, but it won’t change the fact that things change.

While I prefer it when I can read it with some verses missing, 1 John 4 is a very important chapter in the Bible for most people I know because it says the thing they believe most, “God is love.” It says it strongly too, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. …Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their siblings, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen,

cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (11, 20). Perhaps this fits the idea that loving God and loving other people are two sides of the same coin, inseparable though they can appear to be different. These claims about God, that God is love, and that loving people is a way of loving God, are the lens through which I see the entirety of the Bible. I remain grateful that it is there, and available to be used.

John chapter 15 goes on to sound a whole lot like 1 John 4. The Vine and Branches metaphor morphs quickly to point out that the fruit that God is looking for is the practice of abiding in love. So both of them point the question: what impairs love and what encourages it? If we are being continually pruned by God, what helps us let go of what we’re done with, and what helps us connect with what God is up to next? Or, in the metaphor, how do we let go of the pruned and dead branches so there is space for new growth?

Perhaps the best thing we can do for now is notice. We can notice what has been pruned, so we can let it go and we can notice what is growing so we can watch it growing. Perhaps this passage is exactly right for right now. We aren’t the gardener, we aren’t in charge, but we can – at least – stop impeding the Gardener’s work and instead notice what it is.May it be so. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 453.

2 Dan Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self” Ted Talk, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self/transcript?utm_campaign=social&utm_content=talk&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=soci al-science#t-308201 given on March 2014 accessed on April 29, 2021.

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“Journey with Jesus” based on Psalm 133 and John…

April 11, 2021
by Sara Baron

Have
you ever thought about what it would be like to journey with Jesus?
I’m not actually talking about spiritual metaphor here, I suspect if
I was many people could openly say, “Yes, that’s my life!” I
mean, what it was like for the first followers of Jesus to journey
around Galilee and later Judah with the historical Jesus.

Being
a part of the 21^st century, my capacity for 1^st
century historical accuracy is lacking, so I’m sometimes hesitant to
to project myself into those experiences. Nevertheless, it feels
like I can’t enter into this story of “Doubting Thomas” without
letting my questions about journeying with Jesus come front and
center.

I
wonder how often those first followers were uncomfortable, especially
in the face of Jesus’ teaching. This is likely projection on my
part, a reflection of how challenged I am by what he taught. “Love
your enemy,” “give to anyone who asks of you,” “everyone is
your neighbor,” and “love your neighbor as you love yourself”
are all important, profound teachings. They’re also ones I fail to
live up to every day. Did the disciples squirm like I do? Or is it
that I come from a position of relative power and wealth that leads
me to squirm, and those who followed him more often had nothing and
could more easily accept his teaching?

What
about the parables? Even the Jesus Seminar believes that Jesus
probably taught in parables. The thing about parables is that
they’re lessons that keep on giving. Every time you think about
them, you can see something new. They grow with you. This is,
obviously, amazing as a teaching tool. But was it hard, as a first
follower, to be stretched and grown every day? Did it feel like
drinking from a fire hose? Did they ever feel like they got it, they
knew what he was up to, they were following along?

I
wonder too about the pace of life for those first followers. The
gospel writer of Mark likes the word “immediately” and seems to
tell a rapid fire story. But that just means he skips the quiet,
slow parts. Did they linger of meals, talking and laughing? Or was
everything GO-GO-GO like in the midst of an advocacy campaign with a
legislative deadline? I suspect it was the former. I don’t think
you actually build a movement that lasts unless you work at the pace
of human trust, and that pace requires a lot of talking, laughing,
story telling, meaning making, and even sitting around the fire in
quiet wonder.

Some
of my questions really add up to, what kind of spiritual development
happened to those who were following Jesus? The first followers were
members of a powerful faith tradition already, one that Jesus was
using and drawing from. They were also, mostly, disenfranchised
people without any reason to have faith or trust in the systems of
the day. They were marginalized people. (And that’s where I have to
be so careful to pay attention to the fact that I am not one, and not
to project myself more than I should.) In some ways, marginalized
people have an advantage in seeing what God is up to in the world,
because God is always up to upsetting the status quo to allow more
people to thrive AND survive and that is GOOD NEWS for the
marginalized people but threatening for those who are not.

And
they were spending all their time with Jesus, and with each other,
and that feels like the very best set up for rapid faith development.
Jesus was deeply connected with the Divine, likely a mystic, and
ready and able to put the needs of others before his own. In my
life, people like that have taught me SO much, and I’d imagine being
with Jesus for a year would change EVERYTHING.

I’m
wondering this because of the easy way with which Thomas is able to
express his doubt to his fellow disciples. This is an expression of
a rather well developed faith. I want to consider a few “stages of
faith development” according to James Fowler, and wonder about
where the disciples were with those. Yet, I want to be a little bit
careful. It can be really easy to hear about stages like these and
try to characterize one’s self as HIGH as one can, as well as to
deride others for being in LOWER stages. That is NOT the point. In
fact, I suspect that most of us move around between stages based on
the level of stress we’re under, the strength of the teaching we’d
received on any given topic, the level of stress around us, and the
number of other things we’re trying to do at the same time. God is
with people wherever we are, and while we do want to “develop” as
people of faith, part of that development is making peace with the
honesty of where we are and being peaceable about where others are –
without judgement. This is also to say that if you feel like you’ve
moved backward over the past, say 15 months, then have grace with
yourself – that means you’ve been under unsustainable stress.

The
least developed “adult faith”¹
is one that easily yields to authority and quietly pushes away any
conflicts in faith in order to minimize the threat to faith. To help
grasp the stages, I think it may be instructive to see how the Psalm
might be heard from within this stage. The Psalm’s opening verse,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!” can be heard as an encouragement to keep the peace, quiet
one’s own questions, and silence the concerns of those who raise
issues – in the name of “unity.” Unfortunately, this
understanding of unity has the impact of silencing people who are
marginalized and preventing growth. Yet, it is easy to see how it
can be heard that way, right? “How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!” So— be quiet about issues
and experience the good and pleasant!! Thomas is well past this
stage when he easily, immediately, questions the statement of TEN of
his friends and faith companions.

The
next level of “adult faith”²
is characterized by angst and struggle as the person takes
responsibility for their own faith, instead of just following
blindly. In this stage is greater nuance, greater open-mindedness,
and more potential conflict. How might people in this stage hear,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!”? I wonder if the word “unity” becomes more complicated
here, or if “kindred” are subdivided. Is this a place where the
unity of the kindred reflects similar thinking groups, but there are
several different areas of unity? Does challenging authority become
a means of separation? (There are many other possible answers.) It
is clear that Thomas is AT LEAST at this stage, as he speaks his own
truth clearly. He stands in his own integrity whether anyone is with
him or not, although it is worth pointing out that he remains with
the whole, and that might suggest that this sort of unity is large
enough for everyone’s integrity.

The
next level of “adult faith” seems like the one all of the
disciples were in the midst of transitioning into after the death of
Jesus. It generally comes after a significant crisis, and James
Fowler calls this “Conjunctive Faith.” This is faith that can
handle paradoxes and mystery, and let go of pieces of tradition or
faith from prior stages that don’t work anymore. It is a stage and a
space where multiple truths can be held simultaneously, without
conflict. So how might, “How very good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity!” be heard here? Perhaps this is
when “unity” becomes about seeking each other’s well-being
regardless of differences of perspective or differences of need.
Unity doesn’t require similarity, only love, and love flows from God.

I
cannot tell for sure if Thomas or the rest where in this stage yet.
I think most likely they were growing into it, and this is a story
about that transition. This is, after all, a story remembering that
different people have different experiences and rather than all the
value going to the ones with greater experience, there is an
acknowledged blessing of those who follow without the experiences.
This is a story that anticipates us – the ones who did not
experience the first resurrection first hand, and yet celebrate it.

There
is, for Fowler, a rare final stage of adult faith development, one
neither this story nor most people of faith reach. I suspect that
most of the disciples reached it by the end of their lives, and I
further suspect it is what John Wesley was talking about when he
suggested that people could reach perfection in living God’s love
during their lifetimes. I think that people in that stage would
hear, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together
in unity!” and immediately grasp that “kindred” is universal
and “unity” comes when all the people have the peace that comes
after the needs of justice are met.

Was
it because the disciples had time with Jesus that they reached the
final stage? Or was it because they lost Jesus and had to find the
ways to go on that they did? Or both? Or neither? It is
unknowable.

As
United Methodists, we are taught about that idea of reaching
perfection in living God’s love during our lifetimes. It is most
often called “going on to perfection” and most frequently it
serves to make me sad when I realize how far I am from that goal.
Yet, when I slow down enough to listen to the voice of God, I hear
God saying that I don’t have to be there yet, God hasn’t asked that
of me. Rather, God says, I’m asked to be where I am, and be open to
the next means of grace that will help me walk along my journey.
And, that seems fair, because God is a just God, and God doesn’t ask
more of us than we can give, and what we can give is based on who we
are today and where we are on our faith journey.

Which
means, really that I’m back to the metaphorical journey with Jesus,
and am encouraging you to think about how your journey is going, and
what the next steps are, and to check to see if you need any help
along the way. I can think of no clearer role for the church than to
help each other as we move along our journeys with Jesus. Or, in
other words, we help each other move onto perfect. May God help us
all!! Amen

1James
W. Fowler Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development
and the Quest for Meaning (San
Francisco: Harper&Row, 1981). Fowler’s stage 3:
Synthetic-Conventional”
Faith. Summary found at
https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/06/12/the-stages-of-faith-according-to-james-w-fowler/
(I have and love the book, but thank God for other people’s
thoughtful work.)

2 Fowler’s
stage 4: “Individuative-Reflective
Faith”

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

April 11, 2021

Uncategorized

“Quiet Resurrections” based on Jeremiah 31:1-6 and Matthew 28:1-10

April 4, 2021
by Sara Baron

It is really easy to
miss the point of Easter by focusing too much on what happened ~2000
years ago. There is extensive debate among people who debate such
things about what FORM Jesus’s body took after resurrection, which is
a clear indication that a lot of people miss the point. However it
was that Jesus’s disciples transformed from the frightened men who
ran away from the cross to the leaders of the developing church who
faced their own persecution with courage, and continued Jesus’s
ministry in their own lives – that thing that happened was
resurrection. They talked about it as Jesus returning to them,
meeting with them, guiding them, explaining things to them. I have
no idea where the line between metaphor and reality, memory and
presence was in that, nor do I think it matters.

I think it matters
that they became convinced that not even the Empire’s power of death
– they greatest power the Empire had – held any sway over them.
I think it matters they moved from self-protection to courage. I
think it matters they moved from scattering to consolidating their
relationships. I think it matters they moved from the amygdala
response of “danger! Protect self!” to the pre-frontal cortex
questions of “how do we tell the stories of Jesus so others can
hear them?” and “how do we distribute food fairly despite
cultural differences?” and “how much do we take on and how much
do we train other people to do?” They, themselves, moved from the
fear of death to the fullness of life. That’s resurrection.

And the key to all
of it, is that the power of resurrection that moves us from the fear
of death to the fullness of life is a CONTINUAL gift from God that
enriches ALL of our lives, and empowers us in our darkest moments.

Truth be told
though, given the rather hugeness of the original story, everything
else can pale in comparison. And because of that, I think we
sometimes miss the power of resurrection in our lives, because we’re
looking for things that are bigger and flashier than how God mostly
ends up working. So, I offer this example from my own life, of what
I’d like to call a “quiet resurrection.”

When I was a kid, in
gym class, we were expected to test for the “Presidential Fitness
Test” every year, and every year I failed the running portions.
Alas, I told myself, “I’m no good at running.” As I got older, I
continued to fail every running test my physical education teachers
put in front of me. Eventually my narrative switched to, “I’m just
not in good shape.” Sure, I did lots of physical activity all the
time, but CLEARLY I was failing, and CLEARLY that was an indication
that I was “not in good shape.”

That story stuck
with me. By seminary I jogged regularly, but since it was slowly,
and since I still got winded, I told myself “I’m just not in good
shape.” Later, as I’d climb mountains with friends, I’d be
noticeably the most winded and make jokes about “being in bad
shape.” It had become part of my identity.

Five years ago,
after Easter, I got a cold. Truthfully, this is common enough for
pastors and church workers. The intense work of trying to make Holy
Week and Easter meaningful experiences for our churches means a drop
in adrenaline at the end of it, and then people get sick. That time,
the cold became a cough. Normal enough. A month later I went to the
doctor because the cough just wouldn’t subside. Sure enough, I had
bronchitis. But that wasn’t the whole story. When the PA was
listening to my lungs, “something sounded wrong, more wrong than
just bronchitis.” After a serious of tests, my doctor named what I
experienced as “exercised induced asthma” and gave me an inhaler
to use before cardio exercise.

At first, this just
felt like a new way of saying I was broken, because I was so deeply
in that frame. But, what followed was, for me, miraculous. Suddenly
my workouts were… productive. I got BETTER. Also, I could
breathe! And ever so slowly it occurred to me that the issue hadn’t
been my own failure, a lack of exercise, or not trying hard enough –
even though I’d been telling myself that for decades. It was simply
physiological. In fact, it hadn’t even been that I’d been “out of
shape” for all those years. Rather, I had an undiagnosed condition
that impaired me.

It has taken a
shockingly long time for all of this to penetrate my self talk. I’d
gotten so used to thinking of myself as an utter athletic failure,
that I’d failed to notice that the goal of adult fitness is to have
ways to move your body that are FUN and also promote health. When it
comes to that standard, I’m pretty good at being athletic. (Huh,
never said THAT before.)

I’ve heard from many
other people over the years about the impact of diagnosis that feel
similar to this, including in mental health. Varieties on the theme
of “oh, it isn’t just because I wasn’t trying hard enough” or
“there is a NAME for what I’m struggling with” or “other people
find this hard too, I’m not alone.” (Of course, not all diagnoses
feel this way, of course. But some do, and that’s what I’m talking
about.)

So, maybe for some
of you, it will make sense when I say that for me, having a little
inhaler open my lungs so I can exercise, and having that experience
free me from a hurtful narrative about myself, was a significant
experience of resurrection. It freed me to be try more things, be
more playful, enjoy life more! Those things matter.

The stories we
tell ourselves about ourselves can be impediments to the rich full
lives that God wants us to live, and they can be impediments to our
responses to God’s calls on us to build the kindom. Easter is
the story of resurrection, the story of God’s power of LIFE over
death. We’re so busy telling ourselves and God that “I can’t”
based on stories that aren’t true, that we miss God responding, “Oh
honey, you CAN.” (God may use different endearments with you.)

Many times in life a
skill or story is important to getting us through a moment – but
the SAME skill or story becomes an impediment to growth later on.
Switching around the way we see something can change our whole
experience of it. Reframing an experience, or a story can make space
for God’s transforming work in our lives.

The challenge quite
often is that we don’t see our own framing, which makes it hard to
notice it and consider adapting it. This is one of the reasons that
therapists are so useful, they’re particularly trained to noticing
and pointing out dated framing. This is also a reason why we talk to
friends and family – because outside perspective can make a huge
difference in helping us see! And, I think this is a reason why
contemplative prayer is such a gift in people’s lives. As we develop
the skills to be quietly present to God and ourselves, as we
disengage from the frantic pace of life, as we allow our thoughts to
slow down – we are MAKING SPACE for grace to move and show us new
ways.

These little, quiet
resurrections may not seem like enough, but that’s only from a human
perspective. When God is part of one small thing, and another small
thing, those two small things together add up to more than their
parts. (Aka, God is willing to override the rules of math in God’s
commitment to grace and the kindom.) When many little resurrections
are added together, lives become more whole, and as lives become more
whole there is more and more space for that abundant life to expand
to more and more people, and more and more of the kindom is built.
What God is up to is definitely enough.

After all, it was
only one resurrection 2000 or so years ago, and we’re still seeing
the rippling effects. Thanks be to God. Amen

April 4, 2021

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

Uncategorized

“Lifted Up, I Guess” based on Numbers 21:4-9 and…

March 14, 2021
by Sara Baron

I
don’t like the Numbers story, or how it portrays God. I don’t like
that John references it, and adds it to his conception of Jesus. I
gave serious thought to avoiding both of these scriptures today, but
I don’t actually believe in avoiding difficult things. (Fine, also I
didn’t have a better idea.)

Just
in case you didn’t listen to the Numbers reading, or don’t naturally
object to scriptures, let me be clear about what I dislike about it.
It says that the people got impatient with God, and God punished them
for their impatience by sending poisonous snakes to kill them, and
when the people were upset about that Moses intervened and God told
Moses to make bronze serpent and put it on a pole for the people to
look at and be healed, and they were. So…. I dislike the narrative
that God punishes, and even more so that God punishes impatiences,
and even more that God’s punishes by killing. As a bit of an aside,
it also seems distinctly unfair that there was that whole golden calf
incident where making a golden calf was BAD, but in this story making
a bronze snake is the solution. But that is relatively unimportant
in comparison to the “God killing people for getting impatient”
theme.

Ok.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest, because now I can
approach the story from a different angle. The first piece of making
peace with this story is acknowledging that people are meaning
makers, and that means that sometimes we make meaning where it
doesn’t exist. So, if the people in the wilderness encounter
poisonous snakes, it makes plenty of sense that they’d make meaning
of out of it and claim that it is God’s punishment. People do that.

Having
said that, I think we can get more out of this story by (hesitantly)
entering into the mindset of the story than fighting with it. I
don’t actually think God punishes people by sending poisonous snakes
– or having a person lose their job – or creating hurricanes – or
creating a virus to kill millions. However, I think the “solution”
in this story is interesting part. Also, since people still
attribute struggles in their life to Divine punishment, so we don’t
have much space to stand on to judge the ancients.

From
within the story, the problem is that poisonous snakes are killing
people, and the people request Divine intervention so they can live.
Replace snakes with a virus, and we are right there with them. We’ve
prayed for God’s help on this. (Most of us think the vaccines were
God’s answer, and like many things, God’s answer came through the
hard work of people.)

The
ANSWER for “poisonous snakes are killing us” being “make a
bronze snake and put it on a pole for the people to look at” is
REALLY WEIRD. As in, if you asked me to brainstorm answers to
poisonous snake bites, I don’t think it would come up in my first
1000 options. (Ready: move camp away from the snakes, find
something to absorb the venom, look for an antidote, find ways to
pacify the snakes, figure out how to avoid the snakes, find out how
to repel the snakes.) See… none of that has gotten anywhere close
to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole.

So,
for just a moment, what if we take this story as more parable than
historical narrative? What if the SUPER WEIRD SOLUTION is something
designed to make us THINK and PONDER and consider, rather than, say,
replicate?

Then
where is the metaphor? Debie Thomas in “Journey with Jesus”
says, “In order to be saved, the people have to confront the
serpent— they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and
kills them.”¹
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Avoidance
doesn’t solve problems. Systemic change doesn’t come without a deep
understanding of what is broken and who benefits from the breaking.
In making a replica of our problems, we may just learn how to fix
them. There is some GOOD STUFF here once the space is made for it to
speak with its own voice. Thank you metaphor and parable
perspective.

Interestingly
enough, this sort of fits the virus + vaccine issue – you don’t get
to a vaccine without looking at the virus very, very carefully. You
also don’t get immunity without some access to CREATED replications
of aspects of the virus. (Metaphors make life. Humans are meaning
makers. Did I mention that?)

OK,
having found some actually useful meaning in the Numbers passage, now
we’re tasked with connecting this with John’s take on Jesus’s death.
#buckleup

As
you might have noticed, John 3:14-5 says, “And just as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
By “lifted up” John is talking about crucifixion, but he is
doing so in a very intentional way. Clearly, physically speaking,
crucifixion could be understood as being “lifted up” but it was
DESIGNED as a means of public shame and punishment that was so
horrible as to discourage others from engaging in anti-Empire
activities. This was capital punishment in an extra public and
grotesque form. So, calling crucifixion “lifting up” is
RECLAIMING it, denying its power to shame, and reframing it from a
faith perspective instead of a worldly one.

To
call it “lifting up” is to claim that they saw God in Jesus, and
the most extreme shame and pain and death the Empire had to offer
didn’t change that. In fact, to call it “lifting up” inverts it,
taking an experience meant to shame and suggesting it brought honor.
Calling it “lifting up” refuses the power of the Empire to make
meaning, and claims that power for the community of faith.

But
the gospel writer doesn’t even stop there! Instead John reframes the
Numbers story to make meaning out of Jesus. As the bronze snake
replica healed the people who had been poisoned and would have died,
so the crucified Jesus heals the people and offers them full and
abundant life with God. Or, as Debie Thomas puts is:

So why did Jesus die? He
died because he unflinchingly fulfilled the will of God. He
died because he exposed the ungracious sham at the heart of all human
kingdoms, holding up a mirror that shocked his contemporaries and
still shocks us at the deepest levels of our imaginations.
In other words, he unveiled the poison, he showed us the snake, he
revealed what our human kingdoms, left to themselves, will always
become unless God in God’s mercy delivers us. In the cross,
we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to
suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our
hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the
Other must wreak. When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with
chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our
most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great
cost, for the purposes of resurrection.²

The
death that is human violence, fear, and competition is transformed
when Jesus is “lifted up” and shows the power of compassion,
grace, hope, and collaboration. The powers that harm are subverted,
the power of love is …. lifted up. In THIS is life.

It
is so in our lives as well, may we pay attention. Amen

1 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up

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 14, 2021

Uncategorized

“Angry Jesus” based on Psalm 19 and John 2:13-22…

March 7, 2021
by Sara Baron

Growing
up, I saw a lot of images of Jesus as a clean, well groomed man of
European descent. You have probably seen these images too. His hair
is shoulder length, his mustache and beard and visible but trimmed,
his eyes are light, and the whole thing has an aura of “air
brushed” all over it. His expression is neutral, yet somehow
lightly angelic.

Without
going into the issues with presenting a Middle Eastern man as
European, or even the annoying prevalence of this presentation of
Jesus in our culture, I want to talk a little bit about the facial
expression. My first year here, I was given a image of a smiling
Jesus, and I savor it. Ludwig Fruerbach says that we humans project
what we think are the best and most important characteristics of
humans onto God. If that’s true, than a neutral expression on Jesus
suggests we think emotions are NOT holy. A smiling Jesus is a Jesus
with emotions, rather than a stoic, and I strongly prefer it.

If
you search online for images of “Angry Jesus” they mostly portray
today’s Gospel Lesson. Angry Jesus ALSO has an arm raised with a
whip of cords. For people who were raised with an un-emotive
understanding of Jesus or God as well as for people taught that
emotions are bad, today’s Gospel lesson can be rather distinctly
uncomfortable.

Jesus
gets angry. He acts out his anger. It has consequences. Other
people’s livelihoods are impacted. This is neither a neutral nor a
sugary sweet Jesus.

These
days when I hear this story, I hear it through the ears of the
trainings I’ve done on nonviolent direct action and I think how
brilliant it is! From that perspective, Jesus and his disciples
would have been working together on an action that brought people’s
attention to the issues with the Temple. I’m not exactly sure how
they would have said it, but the Temple had been the center point of
Jewish faith for nearly 1000 years, and as such it was hugely
important to Jewish people of faith. Because of that, the Roman
Empire had taken over control of it. The Empire appointed the high
priests, and the high priests were removed by the Empire at will. So
the Temple was at one and the same time the spiritual center of
Jewish life AND a system that had been appropriated for the exact
opposite of its purpose. It likely is helpful to remember that in
the Jewish faith the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah, are
central in casting a vision of how God wants society to work. And
how God wants society to work is in a just and equitably way where
even the most vulnerable and impoverished are cared for, and no one
gets rich of of anyone else’s suffering.

Empires,
however, work the opposite way. Control is maintained with violence
or its threats, and the entire point of the system is to consolidate
wealth and power.

Now,
likely most people at Jesus’s time knew this. All of this. But,
they largely ignored it because… well… what are you gonna do?

That,
I’d guess, was the assessment of the issue. Jesus and his disciples
were looking for a way to clarify the issue, and motivate people into
different behavior. What they came up with, a disruption of the
marketplace around the Temple, is pretty brilliant. It always upsets
the status quo when business gets disrupted. (Several years ago I
participated in a Black Lives Matter protest that walked up 5^th
Ave in NYC, on a Saturday, in December. I couldn’t BELIEVE that we
were shutting down Manhattan during the Christmas Season. Clearly,
it was decided it was less problematic to give the people a voice
than to deal with the consequences of silencing the people.)

The
action, I think we can say, worked. First of all, we’re still
talking about it. Secondly, the appropriation of the Temple stopped.
While this story takes place in John chapter 2, in the Synoptics
this happens right before “Holy Week” and is one of the two most
significant actions that led to Jesus’s arrest and murder. It
clearly shook up the powers, and was experienced as a threat to their
power.

Which
I would call a nonviolent direct
action well done. And that reminds me that the consequences of
nonviolent direct action can be an increase in state sponsored
violence, at least initially.

With
that as introduction (too long?), I want to give us some space to
lean into the anger that we see in Jesus in this passage. I like to
think that he wasn’t just acting when he gathered cords into a whip
or overturned tables, it was a genuine expression of his righteous
anger with the life-affirming Jewish faith being used to destroy
life.

This
being the one year anniversary of the last time we gathered together
for worship in person (and funny enough, the last time we had an in
person charge conference!), it seems like a particularly appropriate
time to name some of the facets of this past year that can reasonably
illicit righteous anger.

The place to start seems to be
with 2.56 Million worldwide deaths, including over 518,000 in the
USA, many – if not most – of which were preventable if we had
prioritized people over profit.

Being intentionally misled by
leaders about the seriousness of this virus, about what we needed to
do to be safe, about how decisions were being made, and about who was
dying and where.

The simple fact that when it
became clear that the people most impacted by COVID were impoverished
people of color, our government immediate stopped caring as much.

That some churches and other
faith communities choose to ignore pleas by community health
professionals for safe practices and created super-spreader events,
while claiming to act in the name of God.

That decisions about when to
close and when to open were not guided by our Bishop or annual
conference leaders, but simply left up to us. (Not that I like top
down leadership either, but leadership becomes imperative when safety
is an issue.)

That when it became clear that
we needed masks the way we got them was through the works of
volunteer saints (thank you!) rather than the government we thought
was prepared to protect us.

That reopening plans have
continued to prioritize “the economy” rather than the people.
Yes, small businesses are struggling, but there are POLICIES that
could help, instead of risking the lives of the workers.

That police use of deadly force
on people of color JUST KEEPS GOING.

That the 644 billionaires in the
USA have earned $1.3 trillion dollars in the past year¹
while 1 in 6 Americans are food insecure.²

That somehow, SOMEHOW, there
still isn’t the will to create universal health care or a livable
minimum wage in our country (or at least its government), even though
we now see that we are only as healthy individually as the least
healthy among us collectively.

That all of the inequalities and
injustices of our society have been on display, and they continue to
be deadly, and there still isn’t a communal will to change.

That the things we need to do to
end this pandemic have been clear for a very long time, but between
political propaganda and the culture war and the need for clear
leadership and a priority on care for the vulnerable, it hasn’t been
done.

I
could go on. But I want to leave some for you to fill in on your
own.

There
is a lot to be righteously angry about. And today, I suggest we feel
it. Feel the anger of the last year, and all the people who have
been lost and all the opportunities that have been lost, and all the
exhaustion we’ve experienced.

Now,
I do NOT want you to let it go.

Not
what you were expecting? That’s fair. I don’t necessarily want you
to keep on being so angry that your blood pressure goes up or you
seek out comfort food, because that just does more harm. But I also
don’t want you to get angry and then “largely ignored it because…
well… what are you gonna do?”

Get
mad. Then get organized. That’s how we change the world. And if
now isn’t the time to organize, then it is the time to get informed,
and to build relationship so we can organize, have direct action, and
make change when the time is ripe. Or, perhaps, now is the time to
get centered into spiritual practice with God, so God can start
pushing and prodding on our hearts to let us know how to organize and
act first. So, I want you to keep righteous anger, and use it as
energy to do good.

Because
that’s how Jesus did it, and that’s how I think God calls us to do
it. Thanks be to God.

Amen

1 https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/hunger-coronavirus-economy/
To be fair, I averaged some stats.

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 7, 2021

Uncategorized

“Self-Denial and A Plague” based on Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16…

February 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

In
the book “Debt: The first 5000 Years,” David Graeber says
economic history as we know it is a falsehood. Instead, he says,
currency came into being this way: in order for empires to expand,
they needed armies at their ever expanding borders; in order to have
armies further from home there needed to be a way to feed them; in
order to convince people to feed armies, they gave the coins to the
army as pay and REQUIRED all the people have some of those coins to
give to the empire. Thus the creation of taxes, coins, expanded
military might, and markets came into being together. Furthermore,
coins made it much easier to calculate and charge interest, which
made it much easier to keep some people in poverty and make the rich
richer.

Graeber
also says that the time when “markets” were created in history
was ALSO the time that the world’s major religions were formed. (It
was a LONG era.) He proposes the religions were an oppositional
force to the value system of the markets. Instead of valuing coins,
interest, and violence, religions emphasized the inherent value of
people and our responsibility to care for each other.¹

When
I read that conception of the history of religion, I was excited and
relieved. First of all, it sounds like God. God works in contexts,
and expansive religions weren’t needed until expansive markets needed
to be countered. Smaller, tribal expressions of faith worked just
fine. It also makes sense of our Bible, which if we’re honest,
bounces back and forth between utterly radical critique of the
systems of power and empire and — well, justifying systems of power
and empire, as if there is a tug of war about the empire trying to
appropriate religion. Over all though, I found it a relieve to see
the 40,000 foot view of what we’re doing.

Both
of our passages today are about following God’s ways. In Genesis we
God hear claiming Abraham and Sarah and making plans to work with
them in the future. In Mark we hear reflections of the early church,
which was undergoing significant persecution, reflecting on the
powers of life and death.

So,
what does it mean to follow God’s ways?

This
was an open question in Genesis, and in Mark, and has been one in our
lives too.

This
is an open question in modern times too, and I hear people offer a
variety of answers. For some following God includes and is expressed
by particular clothing or diets. For some it includes and is
embodied in particular prayer types or times. For some it is
reflected in personal choices – everything from what words are
said, to abstinence from drugs or alcohol or sex – or just dancing
to what is purchased and where and why. For some this is reflected
in choices to join or be present with a faith community for worship –
or more. For some this is related to particular ways of seeing unity
with the divine. For yet others it is related to energy and effort
being used to build the kindom of God.

John
Wesley broke things into 4 categories: personal acts of holiness
(prayer, Bible Study, healthy living), communal acts of holiness
(worship, study, group decision making, sacraments), personal acts of
mercy (doing good works), and communal acts of mercy (seeking
justice.) Sometimes I hear people focus on only 1 of those 4, but
they work best as a whole.

To
break that down into really direct language – I sometimes hear
people think that speaking without swearing and abstaining from
caffeine are SUFFICIENT ways of being faithful to God. More power to
those who find spiritual power in those choices, but I don’t think
they’re sufficient in following God. Following God requires
connecting with others, as well as caring for others, not just
behaving “properly.” (Whatever that means.)

And
all of that gets us to today – to what some of my friends call
“Coronatide.” (If you don’t get it, don’t worry, it isn’t funny
enough to explain.) When reading a passage so emphatically about
self-denial as a means of following Jesus, how do we hear it TODAY?

It
seems to me that two mostly distinct forms of self-sacrifice have
been occurring over the past year:

There has been the sacrifice and
self-denial of those who have directly cared for others at risk to
themselves –which has included people who have gotten sick and
people who have died because of taking this risk.

There has also been a quieter
sacrifice and self-denial of those who have put life as they know it
aside for the well-being of others. (Masks, distancing, not doing
things they love, not being with people they love). To some degree
this sort of sacrifice comes with privilege – many would choose
this one and couldn’t. That doesn’t meant that this sacrifice has
been easy (it hasn’t), nor unimportant. These quiet sacrifices have
taken care of the whole, including those in the first group offering
care.

At
first glance, Mark’s passage seems to be about making a choice to
follow Jesus, and sticking with it. Upon close examination, the Mark
passage is more radical than it first appears. One scholar
summarizes, “The threat to punish by death is the bottom line of
the power of the state; fear of this threat keeps the dominant order
intact. By resisting this fear and pursuing the kingdom’s practice
even at the cost of death, the disciple contributes to shattering the
powers’ reign of death in history. To concede the state’s
sovereignty in death is to refuse its authority in life.”²

Religion
> market/empire indeed!

Mark
suggests here that to choose to follow Jesus is to deny and ignore
the threats of the state. It is to pick a full and abundant life,
and not fear.

Does
that feel strange right now? I don’t know if anyone feels like their
life has been full and abundant in the past year. And there has been
LOTS of fear.

Unless…

Unless
we change out we think about it. No, the past year has not been
“full and abundant,” but this past year we have picked LIFE for
ourselves and for others over and over again. We have prioritized
the full and abundant life of the COMMUNITY over ease and delight in
our own lives. We have tried to maximize the number of people who
will have long, full, healthy lives – with each and every difficult
choice we make.

And
sometimes it is a really important thing to remember that the stuff
we do – masks, and social distancing, and zoom (eh) and lack of
hugs, we do for a reason.

For
life.

For
each other.

For
Jesus.

For
the kindom.

We
have been following the way of God in new, different, and difficult
ways. We have been denying ourselves the joy of in person worship;
we have been carrying the crosses of wearing masks, forfeiting the
lives we know for … all for the sake of other people’s continued
lives.

We
have been trying to take care of all of God’s beloveds. We have been
reminded that the way to care for one is to care for the whole. It
has been hard, and it has mattered – and it still matters. While
what we’ve done has largely been quiet and seemingly small, thanks be
to God for what we’re able to do for each other!

Amen

1David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011).

2Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, 274. He is quoting
Taylor, 1963: 247.

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

February 28, 2021

Uncategorized

“Rainbows and Rain” based on Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark…

February 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

When
do you look for rainbows? After it rains, right? The Genesis story
connects the rainbow with God’s promise not to flood the earth –
again. It is an oddly timed symbol for such a promise, because by
the time it stops raining and the rainbow shows up … it has stopped
raining and the fear of flooding is likely already relieved.

Or,
maybe that’s the beauty of it.

Because
during a rainstorm we can anticipate it. “When this is over, we
can look for a rainbow!” So, even during the storm, we anticipate
it’s ending and the reminder that all will be well.

Of
course, in these days of climate changed by humans, rain can be
rather scary at times. Floods come more often, and more destructive
than usual. But that actually fits. The ancient Israelites were
desert people and deserts have weird relationships with rain. That
is, they need water for life, and have less of it than most, but
because the earth is so parched most of the time, and water tends to
come in deluges rather than sprinkles, heavy rainstorms quickly lead
to flash flooding.

The
ancient Israelites may have had some of our current misgivings about
torrential rain, and this story may have been a way to center in the
midst of their fears. While it rains, you can anticipate God’s
promise. When it is pouring, you start preparing for God’s sign of
hope.

While
I believe that the rainbow became a symbol for LGBTQIA pride because
of the diversity of colors representing celebrating the diverse ways
of being, I have always appreciated this anticipatory hope aspect of
it as well. The choice of the rainbow symbol, to those aware of this
Genesis story, is a choice to say, “things aren’t good now, but
they’re gonna be.”

Or,
in the language of the African American church tradition, “God is
the one who makes a way out of no way.” (I’m so thankful for the
creation of pride flags that intentionally include people of color as
well as the trans community in the beauty of human diversity.)

Dear
ones, the rainbow feels like a good symbol in the midst of our
current “Rainstorm”, doesn’t it? Or perhaps you want to call it
a monsoon. Your choice. 😉

Which,
come to think of it, is also the Jesus narrative, and our gospel
lesson today. So much of what happens in the story assumes a greater
knowledge of the time of Mark and Jesus than we generally have, so
let me retell the story with some context put in:

“In those days, Jesus came
from Nazareth (Nowhereville) of Galilee (sketchy!) – leaving behind
his family, friends, and village – everything he knew, everything
he was. He was baptized by John – a rural Holy Man, in the River
Jordan, the traditional waters for the Ancient Jewish People.
Baptism marked Jesus as a student of John’s, it also symbolized his
choice to leave behind his society and culture and obligations, and
follow only the Divine.

As he was coming out of the
water, he had a God-experience, a rather beautiful one. It was as if
the heavens were torn open and God was more accessible, and the
Spirit came right there to be with him. Jesus heard a voice offering
a blessing, claiming him! “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” In such a way, he who had left his kin
was adopted into God’s family.

After such a profound blessing
though, the Spirit of God send Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus did
not choose it, the wilderness is the place where it is hard to
sustain life, and he was alone, and he struggled, and he was tempted,
and he had to figure out what it would mean for his life to be a
Holy Man too. He was there for 40 days, like Moses was awaiting an
audience with God. With God’s help – again proving Jesus as God’s
kin – Jesus made it through.

When he came back out of the
wilderness, his teacher John had been arrested. He was on his own as
a Holy Man. He went back to Galilee, that suspicious place he was
from, and started speaking God’s ‘good news.’ Which didn’t sound
exactly like people expected it to. He said, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good
news.’”¹

That
“good news” seems to require a little bit more examination. One
scholar points out, “’Gospel’ was most commonly used in antiquity
to announce benefits to the populace.”²
Another summarizes what Jesus says with, “He boldly announces that
the reign of God – with its dreams of justice and love, equality
and abundance, wholeness and unity- is dawning.”³

Jesus
is a rainbow.

He
is a sign of hope, in the midst of the storm. He comes out of
nowhere, is claimed by God, and offers a message of hope and promise.
The world with its power hierarchies, the world that counts some
people as “disposable”, the world where economies exist to let
rich people get richer on the labor of the poor, the world that wants
to appropriate religion to support the powerful, the world that tells
the 99% to fight each other for the scraps left over after the 1%
have been fed, the world which says to take care of yourself and your
own first and let other’s fend for themselves – the WORLD’s powers
are at an end. A new reign is coming, and it will look entirely
different.

In
God’s kindom, there is no hierarchy, everyone is working toward for
the common good. In God’s kindom there are no disposable people, all
are treated as beloved children of God. In God’s kindom, there are
neither rich nor poor. Instead, each person offers their gifts and
labor for the betterment of the whole, and resources are distributed
according to need. In God’s kindom, we all treat each other as
“insiders” and work for each other’s well-being as well as our
own.

To
repent is to let go of the fear, the competitiveness, and the
judgements of the WORLD, and allow the love, the hope, and the
compassion of the kindom to take root.

This
isn’t easy. It never has been. Nor is it now. Judgements are hard
to let go of, including judgements of ourselves. They’re extra hard
in matters of life and death, like vaccines, and access to health
care, and decisions about masking and distancing and schooling and
childcare and caution vs. risk these days. Right? The issue is that
these judgments slip far too easily into shame, including self-shame
from people who have gotten COVID, which IS blaming victims.

I
don’t claim the authority to know about the best vaccine distribution
plan, but I do think it is useful to take a kindom look at our
pandemic lives. What does it look like when we look from love, hope,
and compassion?

From
that angle, I see a lot of gratitude: for the ways people have
adapted to make all of us healthier, for creativity and hard work in
trying to keep things going as they need to, for those offering care
or services even when there is risk to self involved.

I
also see more clearly the injustices of the moment: that not all
“frontline workers” have had a choice about if they want to be in
the frontlines at all, and that far too many people are forced by
economic circumstances to take risks they don’t want to take. That
people of color have been impacted in a multiplicity of ways: with
less access to adequate housing, with more people doing “essential
work”, with less access to protective gear, with higher poverty
rates that require taking greater risks, with less access to health
care, and with less responsive health care when it is accessed. (To
name a few.) Each of these systemic pieces of racism in our society
are highlighted by the higher infection rates and higher death rates
among people of color, and show us yet again the impact of disparity
on people’s very lives. Lack of equity kills, and movements from the
world-as-it-is to the World-as-God-would-have-it-be are movements
from death to life.

Looking
at the pandemic from the kindom view, mostly, I’m overwhelmed with
compassion: for the impossible decisions everyone is making to the
best of their ability; for the dehumanizing isolation so many are
living with; to the life-draining balancing acts being asked of
mothers, fathers, and caregivers. From this view, judgements
lighten, and love grows.

Finally,
the kindom view reminds us that we are no stronger than our “weakest
link.” That is, we are unable to be healthy in isolation. Until
the WORLD is vaccinated, all of us are at risk. And that’s always
been true, but now we can see it clearly.

We’re
all in this together. We’re all in this storm together (although it
impacts us differently.) And from the midst of this storm, we’re all
reminded that at the end of the storm, the rainbow comes. God
doesn’t abandon us in the storm, hope doesn’t die, the kindom is at
hand, repent and believe. Entering into the kindom’s values will
help kindom come. Remembering the rainbow helps us live through the
storm. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Summary
influenced by:

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, ~128.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L.
Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 146-7.

Debie
Thomas, “Beasts and Angels”
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2924-beasts-and-angels
2-14-21, accessed 2-18-21.

2Malina
and Rohrbaugh, 148.

3Myers,
91.

February 21, 2021

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

Uncategorized

“Becoming More Human” based on Psalm 50:1-6 and Mark…

February 14, 2021
by Sara Baron

Do you listen to podcasts? I
know some of you do, and I get regular recommendations for great
ones, which means I often feel guilty for never getting to them. I
download them sometimes, with expectations of listening. However
between being a person who values the space to think that silence
gives me, loving classical music when I am in the car, and preferring
to learn by reading, I just never get around to podcasts.

This is true with one exception.
After all, I have an exercise bike that I use regularly, and I
prefer to be slightly distracted from the challenges it provides me.

Rather to my own surprise,
ride after ride, I keep on going back to “The Enneagram Journey”
hosted by Suzanne Stabile. The Enneagram is one of those means of
modeling humanity by breaking people up into different types and
explaining how the types are different. As with any other model, I
think it is useful until it isn’t, and should be held lightly as
containing truth without being definitive. So perhaps it is odd I
keep going back to this, but the host is mesmerizing. She is a
wisdom teacher, who uses the Enneagram as her model, and I like
wisdom. Maybe more so though, she is unfailingly kind and curious.
While being entirely herself, the only well-known person I can think
of to compare her to is Mr. Rogers, but she does her work for adults.
I find listening to her soothing and inspiring.

While listening to her podcast
this week, she stopped me in my tracks. I had to get out my phone
and write down this quote, WHILE ON THE BIKE. In passing, she
mentioned a suggested spiritual practice and then said, “Spiritual
meaning it will make you more human.”

I believe that. I’ve never said
it quite that way, but I believe that. Spiritual means it will make
you human. The goal isn’t to be less human, or less embodied, or
less connected, but rather to be MORE so. More human, more embodied,
more connected.

At its core, this is what
today’s Gospel lesson is about. This may not be what you see at a
first glance though. When Jesus appears in dazzling white clothing
with prophets of old and a voice coming out of a cloud, this may seem
to be about the super natural, the beyond earthly, or perhaps the
“spiritual realm,” I don’t think it is.

I think this is MOSTLY a story
about coming back down the mountain to continue doing ministry, and
that the stuff that happened on the mountain was meant to be
motivation and support for the important stuff happening back where
the people were. The top of the mountain was an experience of the
Holiness of the Divine, as well as an ah-ha moment about the
connection Jesus had to God’s work. These experiences are such
wonderful gifts when we have them – connections with God, senses of
the Holy One, ah-has about the wonder of what is.

At its best, worship can be like
a mountaintop experience, rich in sensory experience and openings to
experience the Spirit. But like the journey of the disciples in the
Gospel, the mountaintop is a temporary destination, and the purpose
of worship is to go back OUT into the world, refreshed and renewed,
filled with God’s love and ready and able to share it. Worship helps
us be more human! I think in person gatherings are even better at
this – when we can sing together and breath together, when we can
check in on each other before and after, when our emotions
intermingle, when the children lead us and open our hearts, when we
feel the base notes rumble the pews, when we can smile at each other,
and notice how someone is walking differently. Put that way, I’m
reminded of how incredibly embodied worship is, and can see clearly
how well it helps us be more human. But even this online worship,
lacking those elements, is still aimed at our humanity. The
scriptures are ways that people have made sense of their humanity for
thousands of years. The music aims to connect us with our emotions.
The lyrics of the hymns along with the words of the prayers remind us
of the universality of our humanity, and the needs and desires we
share with each other. Sermons, at their best, speak to who we are
and who we want to be, our humanity. We give, out of a sense of
gratitude for our lives, and out of a desire to bring more full
living to others. The images that the church offers each other to
intersperse our liturgy itself are visual art, means of connecting
with our humanity and with the sacredness of our earthly life. Not
to mention, we start with a breath prayer, and the fact that
breathing is proven to be one of the best access points to
spirituality really just proves everything!

I could make the same points
about prayer and spiritual practice, but I suspect that will be
overkill, so you can either trust me on it, or look at it yourself.

Spirituality is about being more
human.

Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it
wonderful? Isn’t it counter to some other narratives we’ve heard
along the way?

The point of the
transfiguration, no matter how wonderful it was, is the going back
DOWN the mountain. The point of prayer and contemplation is to meet
God in our humanity. The point of worship is to become more human.

I’ve been slowly reading “The
Body is Not an Apology: The Radical Power of Self Love” by Sonya
Renee Taylor. (Slowly because it is radical enough to take time to
absorb.) Taylor spends a whole lot of time talking about body love,
and pointing out that when we hate our bodies – or even just things
about our bodies – we end up doing harm to other bodies. She is
articulate about the imperative work of becoming more deeply embodied
and more profoundly human as a good in and of itself AND as the only
way we can truly love other people in their humanity and their
bodies.

That seems like the completion
of Stabile’s idea. Spiritual means it will make you more human. And
being more human means you are more able to be loving to other humans
– all of whom are God’s beloveds.

So, dear ones, may we become
more spiritual, more human, more loving. 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

February 14, 2021